Tom Flood Tom Flood i(A505 works by)
Born: Established: 1955 Sydney, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Tom Flood, the son of writer Dorothy Hewett, was born in Sydney and grew up in Western Australia. After attending university for a time, he worked at a variety of jobs, including wheat sampler, geologist's assistant, tuna fisherman, ore sample pulveriser, bus conductor and musician.

Turning to fiction-writing in 1985, Flood won the 1988 Australian/Vogel Award with his first novel Oceana Fine. Set in Western Australia's wheat-belt, the novel explores the violent family history of Rex Cleaver against the background of a sea of wheat and the lives of wheat men.

Since 1988 Flood has worked on a second novel, Septimus Grout: an extract from this work was published in Southerly, but as at 2016, the novel itself has not been published. He also published a number of short stories.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

The Old Trails 2001 single work short story
2001 winner Banjo Paterson Writing Awards — Prose
y separately published work icon Oceana Fine North Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1989 Z120844 1989 single work novel

'Beneath a vast constructed/deconstructed landscape (both human and geographic) lies a labyrinth of disused mineshafts. It is a landscape in which vast saline lakes suddenly appear overnight, in which wheat babies disappear into wheat fields, in which lizards are mistaken for rocks, in which a huge grain silo becomes a cathedral and a gold front-end loader the angel of the apocalypse. It is a place where history repeats/mirrors itself and is populated by doppelganagers and we find ourselves following the after-image of the phosphene as though it was a manuscript hoping for illumination.

'The book deals with multiplicity of perception - through history/memory, national mythologies, families and writing (blood and ink), puzzles and their reasons - which might be said to be their execution.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
1988 winner The Australian / Vogel National Literary Award (for an unpublished manuscript)
1990 winner Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Prize for Fiction
1990 winner Miles Franklin Literary Award
VIEW ALL AWARDS
Last amended 21 Nov 2016 13:22:54
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