Vale Frank Moorhouse (1938-2022)

Vale Frank Moorhouse (1938-2022)

ASAL mourns the death of writer Frank Moorhouse. Born in Nowra in NSW, Moorhouse went on to a career as a journalist before making a name as a writer. In the 1970s he became known as one of Australia’s foremost experimentalists in fiction, working with forms of discontinuous and fragmented narrative in collections Futility and other animals (1966), The Americans, Baby (1972) and The Electrical Experience (1974). Throughout his career, he advocated for the conditions of Australian writers: campaigning against censorship, for copyright attribution, and for better financial support for Australian authors. He is perhaps best known for his brilliant historical trilogy, Grand Days (1993), Dark Palace (2000) and Cold Light (2011), which follow Australian Edith Campbell Berry to the League of Nations. Controversially, Grand Days was ruled ineligible for the 1994 Miles Franklin Award, but Dark Palace went on to win the award in 2000. In his writing and advocacy, Moorhouse made a significant contribution to Australian literature and its readers. Frank was also an attendee at early ASAL conferences where he was responsible for the Frank Moorhouse Perpetual Trophy for Ballroom Dancing (which did not end up being perpetual after all).