Cirrus@Austlit

Liam Davison taught history, English and creative writing in Victorian high schools and colleges.

His short fiction won many awards and his first novel The Velodrome (1988) was shortlisted for the 1987 Australian/Vogel Award. His short stories are widely published and broadcast, many of which are included in Collected Stories (2001). Supported by grants from the Australia Council, Davison wrote Soundings (1993) which won the National Book Council Banjo Award for fiction. Set in the Westernport Bay area of Victoria, the novel describes events from several periods of Australian history. Historical events are conflated in a complex narrative that demonstrates how the past continues to exist in the present.

Davison won more grants, including a Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship which he used to travel in Italy and France. His third novel The White Woman (1994) was short-listed for several prizes, including the Age Book of the Year. Set in Gippsland, Victoria, the novel explores the notions of civilisation, history and myth surrounding the disappearance of a woman during the 1840s. Davison explores similar themes in Betrayal (1999). Set mainly in France, the novel examines the actions of a woman who is forced to remember a brutal crime she witnessed thirty years earlier.

Along with his wife, Frankie, Davison was one of the 298 people killed when the Malaysian Airlines plane (MH17) he was travelling in was shot down over Ukraine.