Tim Richards's family moved to Hampton, the 'dreamy' Melbourne suburb that features in his fiction on the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Richards was educated at Hampton High, Melbourne University, the Australian Film Radio and Television School, and Deakin University (where he was taught by Gerald Murnane). Richards's first published fiction appeared in Wisden Cricket Monthly, December, 1979. After leaving film school in 1989, he wrote sketch comedy as a staff writer on all eight series of Fast Forward and three series of Full Frontal. Two series of surreal football stories, Endgames, appeared in the Melbourne Age in 1997-1998.
Tim Richards's autobiographical trilogy, Approximate Life, was published in three volumes by Allen and Unwin: Letters to Francesca, (stories, 1996) The Prince, (a novella, 1997) and Duckness (stories, 1998). Though 'peeved by publishers' current distaste for story collections', Richards has continued to concentrate on that medium, and the bulk of his stories are best described as 'bizarre autobiographical fantasies', or 'autobiographical expressionism'. Richards was script-editor on the feature Looking for Alibrandi, and he has worked as a script consultant, mainly for the New South Wales Film and Television Office. Richards also co-wrote, (with Don Kaltenbach) Prostate Cancer: A Survivor's Guide, (1993).
Source: largely biographical information supplied by author, May 2005.
