Cirrus@Austlit

Andrew McGahan was born the ninth of ten children on a wheat farm in Dalby, Queensland. His mother was a teacher and their home had a room dedicated to books. He attended the Catholic School in Dalby before boarding at Marist Brothers in Brisbane for years 11 and 12. He began an Arts degree at the University of Queensland, however, after one month he returned to Dalby to help with the family farm. During this time McGahan wrote his first novel which was never published.

McGahan returned to Brisbane where he worked part-time jobs, lived on the dole and 'wrote piles of bad poetry and short stories' (Interview, Allen & Unwin, 2005). McGahan says he was attracted by 'the romance of being a writer and of living some sort of cool, bohemian lifestyle.' Later he became more interested in the writing itself finding it 'a very pleasant and satisfying way to exist.' While unemployed in 1991, he wrote Praise, a largely autobiographical tale of hard drugs, bodily functions and sex set in Brisbane.

He followed Praise with 1988, a dark crime novel that examines the police corruption of Queensland prior to the Fitzgerald Inquiry Queensland. A prequel to Praise, 1988 (1995) was the joint winner for The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist of the Year. Praise won The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award.

In 2000 Mcgahan published his first crime novel. Last Drinks won the 2000 Ned Kelly Award for Crime Writing Best First Novel and was shortlisted for both the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and The Age Book of the Year Award. Although the plot centred around a crime and mystery, Mcgahan details that ‘the fun stuff was writing about the decay of Queensland’ (Interview, Sydney Morning Herald, 2019). 

The White Earth (2004) was McGahan’s most successful novel. Among a multitude of other accolades, The White Earth was awarded the 2005 Miles Franklin Literary Award. As well as this, it won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award, and The Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction. Set in the early days of white settlement and outback Queensland, The White Earth is a powerful novel that explored the power of land and the cost of colonialism to First Nations people.

McGahan has been a full-time writer since 1992 resisting offers of part-time employment. In an interview in the Australian he comments that 'A typical day, when he's in the middle of writing a book, is to write for about three hours, sit around a lot, play on the net - especially computer Scrabble, an enduring passion - watch Buffy the Vampire Killer or Star Trek (not much Australian drama), read - hang out. And then cook.' ( The Australian, 4.11.2000).

In an interview given on winning the Commonwealth Writer's Prize in 2005, McGahan stated that he reads nonfiction in preference to novels - 'I'd be stretched to name anything from the last 20 years' although he grew up on a diet of fantasy and horror. He has a passion for politics and sees Australia as a 'cold and hard' place in which what is happening now is 'dark and ugly, socially and politically'. (Interview, Advertiser, 2 July 2005).

McGahan has produced novels, stage plays and screenplays. He has won multiple literary awards, in 1994 he was awarded the Literature Board Fellowship Category B Fellowship for Fiction. He moved to Melbourne in 2000 where he lived with his partner Leisje Grieve until his death in 2019. Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2018, his final work The Rich Man's House was published in September 2019 posthumously, The Rich Man’s House was shortlisted for the 2020 Voss Literary Prize and won the Aurealis Award for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction for Horror.