Nathan Hobby

Summary

Nathan is a biographer based in Perth. His books have won the WA Premier's Prize for Book of the Year and the TAG Hungerford Award. He is an engaging and thoughtful speaker and workshop facilitator.

Biography

Nathan's The Red Witch: A biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard (Melbourne University Publishing 2022) won the 2023 WA Premier's Prize for Book of the Year. An expansion of his PhD thesis, the Sydney Morning Herald described it as 'an eloquent and powerful tracing of the life of one of Australia’s once most celebrated writers. It is a compelling tale that will be valued by general readers and scholars of literature and history.'

Nathan's debut was a novel, The Fur (Fremantle Press 2004), which won the TAG Hungerford Award. He has also written for Westerly, Australian Dictionary of Biography and Open Book. Nathan's current project is a biography entitled John Curtin and his Afterlives: A Biography. He is an honorary research fellow at the University of Western Australia and works as a special collections librarian.

An experienced speaker and workshop facilitator, Nathan is available to give talks on Katharine Susannah Prichard and John Curtin and talks or workshops on the art of biography.

Relevant qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy, UWA, 2019
Master of Arts (Creative Writing), UWA, 2013

Recent experience

City of Glen Eira Libraries, Melbourne - Online talk: Katharine Prichard in Glen Eira, May 2024
City of Bayswater Libraries - Talk: The Life, Loves and Books of Katharine Susannah Prichard, the Red Witch of Greenmount, February 2024
City of Melville Storylines Festival - In Conversation, October 2023
Mandurah Readers' and Writers' Festival - In Conversation, January 2023
Peter Cowan Writers' Centre - Workshop: The Arts of the Biographer, March 2018