John Hughes John Hughes i(A85519 works by)
Born: Established: 1961 Cessnock, Cessnock area, Hunter Valley, Newcastle - Hunter Valley area, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

John Hughes is a Sydney-based author. He was educated at Cessnock High School, the Universities of Newcastle and Cambridge, and the University of Technology, Sydney. He has taught at the University of Newcastle and has been Director of English as Sydney Grammar School.

Most Referenced Works

Affiliation Notes

  • Hughes has written of his Ukrainian heritage in a number of his essays. His mother was born in Kiev and came to Australia in 1949 as a Displaced Person.

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The Dogs : A Novel Perth : Upswell Publishing , 2021 21779574 2021 single work novel

'Is it possible to write about the living without thinking of them as already dead?

'Michael Shamanov is a man running away from life’s responsibilities. His marriage is over, he barely sees his son and he hasn’t seen his mother since banishing her to a nursing home two years earlier. A successful screen writer, Michael’s encounter with his mother’s nurse leads him to discover that the greatest story he’s never heard may lie with his dying mother. And perhaps it’s her life he’s been running away from and not his own. Is the past ever finished? Should we respect another’s silence? And if so, is it ever possible to understand and put to rest the strange idea of family that travels through the flesh?

'From the Miles Franklin shortlisted author of No One comes a haunting gem of family secrets and impossible decisions.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2022 longlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award Removed from longlist after revelation of plagiarism.
2022 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
2022 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Prize for Fiction
y separately published work icon No One Nedlands : UWA Publishing , 2019 15837439 2019 single work novel

'In the ghost hours of a Monday morning a man feels a dull thud against the side of his car near the entrance to Redfern Station. He doesn’t stop immediately. By the time he returns to the scene, the road is empty, but there is a dent in the car, high up on the passenger door, and what looks like blood. Only a man could have made such a dent, he thinks. For some reason he looks up, though he knows no one is there. Has he hit someone, and if so, where is the victim?

'So begins a story that takes us to the heart of contemporary Australia’s festering relationship to its indigenous past. A story about guilt for acts which precede us, crimes we are not sure we have committed, crimes gone on so long they now seem criminal-less.

'Part crime novel, part road movie, part love story, No One takes its protagonist to the very heart of a nation where non-existence is the true existence, where crimes cannot be resolved and guilt cannot be redeemed, and no one knows what to do with ghosts that are real.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2020 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
y separately published work icon Someone Else : Fictional Essays Artarmon : Writing and Society Research Centre Giramondo Publishing , 2007 Z1415040 2007 selected work essay '...Hughes pays homage to twenty-one artists, writers and musicians who have had a formative influence on his imagination. From Chekhov and Borges and Beckett, to proust, Rothko and Cage - each essay brings its subjuect to life in unexpected ways. Kafka writes the parable of Abraham and Isaac, with no one to stay Abraham's knife. Wittgenstein considers the relationship between turtles and time. Bob Dylan stars in a fantasy of travellers and deserts and women with knives and silver earrings. Just around the corner from where Hughes works, Dostoyevsky fries kidneys in the kitchen of his Stanley Street terrace...Someone Else uses the essay as a form of autobiography. Here, however, the essays are fictions. Or are they? Hughes tells the stories of the figures who live in his mind by making them tell his stories - and in doing so engages in an art of literary vantriloquism.' - back cover
2009 longlisted The Warwick Prize for Writing
2008 winner Queensland Premier's Literary Awards Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award
2008 winner Festival Awards for Literature (SA) Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature South Australian Literary Awards Award for Innovation in Writing
Last amended 25 Jan 2016 06:45:11
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