Philip McLaren – January 2015

Philip is a Doctor of Creative Arts, a prize-winning author of historical fiction, contemporary fiction and non-fiction, social commentary, screenplays and academic essays. He has exhibited paintings and sculpture internationally and has lectured in Canada, England, France, Spain, Germany, New Zealand and Australia. Philip has worked in the media as a writer, producer, director and editor in film and television and previously as a set designer, animator, illustrator, graphic designer and scenic artist.  He has participated in four creative writing tours to outback Aboriginal communities and has delivered numerous lectures and readings at universities and writers’ festivals in Australia and internationally.

Murder in Utopia
Cockatoo Books, 2009; ISBN 9780646503820
Frustrated in providing medical services (with an under-staffed, under-funded medical centre) to a neglected Aboriginal community in the red centre of Australia, reformed alcoholic New York surgeon Jack Nugent becomes engrossed in the exotic Aboriginal people and culture and is outraged by the government neglect he sees everywhere. Jack never liked looking at dead people and he hated touching them, but unexpectedly he is swept up in a bizarre ritual murder investigation, in which he must provide police with his forensic findings. Vital evidence goes missing and every avenue he takes is blocked. Clara, a powerful black lawyer, helps him overcome the obstacles police and the Aboriginal community place in his path and a better social outcome for this ancient desert community becomes largely dependent on them.

West of Eden: The Real Man from Snowy River
Cockatoo Books, 2013; ISBN 9780987567246
Young Aboriginal Australian, Toby rode the high plateaus and steep mountain gorges chasing brumbies, his feats documented and dated about two years before Paterson began writing his iconic poem after visiting the region. Paterson’s only description of ‘the man’ is that he is a ‘stripling’. This story also features Kurnai leader, Bunjileenee; Lauren Tucker, his white consort, who in real life he rescued from a shipwreck; and Angus McMillan who, with his gang of vigilantes, slaughtered hundreds of Snowy River families. It’s a love story; Aboriginals Toby and Louise wrestle with how they might fit into the new Australia of British imperialism. Most of all, it is the story of one young man’s feat of such outstanding horsemanship that, masked, he entered Australian history, literature and legend.