Fernando Basili was born in Pistoia, Italy. In 1950 he obtained a diploma of Commercial Accounting and in 1957 a diploma of Accounting and Conmmercial Practice. After arriving in Australia in 1960, he received a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree from the University of Sydney in 1965 and a diploma of Linguistic Language Laboratory Theory and Practice from the Sydney Technical College in 1967. In 1973 he published a textbook titled Basic Italian at the University of Sydney. In 1974 he gained a diploma in Teaching from the University of Sydney and in 1980 he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree by the University of New England for a critique of Machiavelli's writing. In 1982 he submitted, to the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research at Macquarie University, a Master's thesis in Linguistics titled A Study on Languages in Contact: The Influence of English on the Communication Code Used by the Italians in Australia. In 1984 he completed a Master of Arts thesis at Macquarie University titled The Department of Italian at the University of Sydney : an analysis and a projection. He was described in the early 1990s as the only Italo-Australian writer to take a European view of contemporary Italian society. He has taught Italian in schools and universities. In 2003 he received a special prize from the judge's panel of Il Molinello periodical for his novel Stravaganze a Sorpresa.
