Mark Mordue Mark Mordue i(A563 works by)
Born: Established: 1960 ;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Mark Mordue is a freelance writer who has contributed to Australian and international journals and newspapers. He was the founding editor of Australian Style (1992-1997) and is also the author of the travel book Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2022 shortlisted Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship for a biography of singer-songwriter Nick Cave.
2016 highly commended W. B. Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia for 'Love Sculpture (Annette)'.
2013 recipient Australia Council Grants, Awards and Fellowships New Work - Emerging Writers Non-fiction

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Boy on Fire : The Young Nick Cave Sydney : Fourth Estate , 2020 20420025 2020 single work biography

'The first volume of the long-awaited, near-mythical biography of Nick Cave, by award-winning writer, Mark Mordue.

'A beautiful, profound, profane and poetic biography of the early formative years of the dark prince of Australian rock 'n' roll, Boy on Fire is Nick Cave's creation story. This is the story of the artist first as a boy, then as a young man. A deeply insightful work which charts his family, friends, influences, milieu and, most of all, his music, it reveals how Nick Cave shaped himself into the extraordinary artist he would become.

'As well as a powerfully compelling biography of a singular, uncompromising artist, Boy on Fire is also a fascinating social and cultural biography, a vivid and evocative rendering of a time and place, from the fast-running dark river and ghost gums of Wangaratta, to the nascent punk scene which hit staid 1970s Melbourne like an atom bomb, right through to the torn wallpaper, sticky carpet and the manic, wild energy of nights at the Crystal Ballroom.' (Publication summary)

2014 joint winner Australian Centre Literary Awards Peter Blazey Fellowship as for Tender Prey: The Life and Times of Nick Cave
2021 shortlisted APA Book Design Awards Best Designed Autobiography / Biography / Memoir designed by Hazel Lam
2021 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian Biography of the Year
Down by the River : Nick Cave’s Boyhood in Wangaratta (1959-70) 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , August 2019;

'‘One of the many things I regret about writing And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989) was that I didn’t set it in Australia. It could just as easily be set in Wangaratta rather than an imaginary part of the American South. I don’t know why I didn’t do that. I wish I had. For sure that book comes from growing up in the country, from living a life in country Australia. It’s not from listening to murder ballads. The river was the sacred place of my childhood and everything happened down there.' (Introduction)

2020 shortlisted The Woollahra Digital Literary Award Non-fiction
Last amended 15 Nov 2021 11:39:23
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