George Alexander was born in Western Australia of Greek and Italian parents from Egypt. A speaker of Greek, Italian, French and some Arabic, he has worked as a lecturer at the Sydney University of Technology in the Department of Text and Production and in several other tertiary institutions in New South Wales. In 1978 he won the Frederick May Memorial Essay Prize (Department of Italian, University of Sydney). In 1990 his work Sparagmos was shortlisted in the New Writing category of the 1990 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and he received a writer's grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council. In 1991 he received a Writing Fellowship from the Visual Arts and Crafts Board, and from the Literature Board. He has read at the Performance Space, Sydney, in 1985, and presented Sleight of Hand at the Jameson Street Cabaret, Sydney in 1984.