Barry Dickins is an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n author, artist and playwright.

He was born in the Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

 suburb of Reservoir

Reservoir, Victoria

Reservoir is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 12 km north from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Darebin. At the 2006 Census, Reservoir had a population of 45,970....

. Leaving school early he worked in a factory and then as a set-painter for television. Through his association with La Mama Theatre, his first play, Ghosts, was performed in 1974. He has subsequently written a further nine plays. His play Remember Ronald Ryan

Ronald Ryan

Ronald Joseph Ryan was the last person to be legally executed in Australia. Ryan was found guilty of shooting and killing prison officer George Hodson during a prison escape from Pentridge Prison, Victoria in 1965...

won him the 1995 Victorian Premier's Literary Award

Victorian Premier's Literary Award

The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Governmentwith the aim of raising the profile of contemporary creative writing and Australia's publishing industry....

. He has also written short stories, biography and other non-fiction and children's books.

External links

• Interview from The Age
  The Age
  The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
  
  
• Drawings
• Saint Dymphna's Bells Poem
• Interview with Steve Dow