Publisher's synopsis
John Marsden is an Australian writer and teacher. He has been writing YA literature for three decades and has made an indelible mark on generations of readers and writers in Australia.
John’s first book, So Much to Tell You, was published in 1987. Since then, he has written or edited over 40 books and has sold over 5 million books throughout the world. He is best known for the Tomorrow Series, which began with Tomorrow, When the War Began, in 1993. Tomorrow, When the War Began, was adapted into a film in 2010 and a TV series in 2016.
His awards include (and are no way limited to) Young Adult Book Award and Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for So Much To Tell You in 1988; Grand Jury Prize for Australia’s favourite young person’s novel 1996 for Letters from the Inside and listed by the American Library Association as one of the Best Books for Young Adults 1995; and the Australian Multicultural Children’s Book Award in 1994 and the Young Australian Best Book Award in 1995 for Tomorrow, When the War Began.
In 2006, John founded an alternative primary school, Candlebark School. He is also the patron of youth media organisation Express Media.
Resources
- Read the show notes and transcript here.
- Learn more about John Marsden’s Tomorrow, When the War Began here.
John Marsden was born in Victoria, Australia in 1950. He went to many different primary schools, and from an early age enjoyed the journeys into magical worlds that reading could provide. His teachers in Grade 4 and Grade 6 encouraged him to write, and at the age of nine he decided he wanted to become an author.
For seven years he attended The King’s School Parramatta, a strict military school in Sydney, and from there went on to the University of Sydney. However, he soon decided that a career in law looked too boring, so he dropped out and drifted around for nearly 10 years, trying different jobs, and earning just enough money to support himself.
When he was 28, he began a teaching course, which he loved from the start. Embarking on a teaching career, he also became more and more interested in writing, and in 1987 succeeded in getting his first book, So Much to Tell You, published. A string of huge hits followed, highlighted by the Tomorrow series and The Ellie Chronicles. John has now sold more than two and a half million books in Australia alone, but is also an international best-seller, with many major awards to his credit.
John’s interest in education has never waned. In 1998 he bought the Tye Estate, 850 acres of natural bush, on the northern edge of Melbourne, and later added the property next door. For eight years he ran enormously popular writers’ courses and camps at Tye, before starting his own school there, Candlebark, in 2006.
Candlebark is a P-8 school, which has been described by John as “somewhere between Steiner and The Simpsons”. Its friendly, lively and positive atmosphere has resulted in such early success that it has a four-year waiting list.
Visit John Marsden’s official website.