Thomas Keneally

Award Winning Author

Tom Keneally is one of Australia's most prolific and best known novelists. He is the multi-award-winning author of twenty-six works of fiction and eight works of non-fiction.

In 1982 Tom Keneally won the Booker Prize for Schindler's Ark, which was made into the Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List. His novels The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest and Confederates were all short-listed for the Booker Prize, while Bring Larks and Heroes and Three Cheers for the Paraclete won the Miles Franklin Award.

Born in Sydney in 1935, Tom Keneally studied for the priesthood as a young man and then began a career in school teaching before his literary success enabled him to become a fulltime writer. He has won a number of Australian and international prizes, twice short listed for the Booker Prize before winning in 1982.

A playwright as well as author, Tom is as eloquent off the page as on it. He is both erudite and earthy with an engaging, self-deprecating sense of humour that appeals to audiences worldwide.

His telling of how he first learned of the Oscar Schindler story while having his briefcase mended in a small Los Angeles store owned by one of Schindler's holocaust survivors is both moving and warmly humorous.

Tom Keneally is also a keen sports follower. Although his childhood dream of playing Rugby League for Australia remains unfulfilled he has settled for being an occasional newspaper sports writer about important events on the League calendar.

Tom Keneally has been President of the Australian Society of Authors, a television commentator, an actor and is a leading stalwart of the Australian Republican movement. He is married with two adult daughters.