John Marsden - Biography

John Marsden is known as one of Australia’s best known teen authors, has produced some of Australia’s best loved books and is also recognized as being a highly acclaimed picture book writer. Marsden is the author of a collection of widely popular novels, some including The Tomorrow Series, So Much to Tell You, Creep Street and The Ellie Chronicles. The Tomorrow Series, including 7 fantastically written books, was surveyed amongst 40,000 people as being Australia’s fourth favourite book of all time and quoted by the Daily Advertiser as, ‘...without a doubt the best series for young readers that an Australian writer has ever produced’.

John Marsden was born in Victoria, Australia, in 1950 on the 27th September. His father was a bank executive who fought with distinction in World War One while his mother was a strong person who believed in the value of education and she did everything possible to give her children successful starts in their career. Marsden was the third of four children and spent much of his childhood growing up in rural Australia, moving from Victoria to Tasmania and finally to Sydney.

Marsden went to many primary schools and from grade 4 his teachers were encouraging him to become a writer. At the age of ten he attended The King’s School Parramatta, a strict military school in Sydney, and stayed at the school for the next 7 years. Upon completion of his high schooling, Marsden began a Law/Arts degree at the University of Sydney, and worked in a variety of jobs, at a mortuary, in a sideshow, as a security guard, at abattoirs, hospitals, morgues and even a haunted house. But Marsden grew a sense of alienation and loneliness, deriving from family rifts, educational experiences and his own personality, resulting in his dropping out of University and eventually being admitted to a psychiatric hospital. John went on to become an English teacher, where he accidently began the success of his career by writing a short novel for his disinterested yr 9 English students.

John Marsden writes about universal themes and situations. He often writes about being confined, like in his books Checkers, Letters from the Inside, So Much to Tell You and The Great Gatenby. In many of his books, the main character or characters often reflect on themselves personally, and analyse the behaviour of themselves and those around them. This is common behaviour for someone being confined to do, which maybe the reason for his use of describing confinement. Marsden often creates cliff-hangers and suspenseful or surprising twists to his novels, leaving the reader with a thirst to read further, “The reader is unwittingly flung headlong and gasping into the plot.. the images created are so vivid that they stay with you long after the book is reluctantly closed on the final page” – Melbourne Herald-Sun. He has abandoned the rule of ‘edit as you go’, but instead prefers to write at full throttle, not worrying about editing until he had completed the book. Marsden also tends to write from a female perspective and with much emotion and feeling. It’s his personal touch and reflections on the situation that helps to connect the reader, and his ability to create the reality of the event that differentiates him from many other well-known authors.

Marsden’s first book, So Much to Tell You, was published in 1987 at age 37, and took him a mere three weeks to write. His landmark Tomorrow Series is recognised as the most popular book series for young adults ever written in Australia and describes the personal journey of a group of teenagers and the perils they must face to save their home and their loved ones. The book has been translated and published all over the world and won numerous awards including The Alan Marshall Award, The Christopher Medal (USA) and the National Children’s Book Award (Australia). The first book of this series, Tomorrow When the War Began, has been reprinted 26 times in Australia. Free copies of Tomorrow When the War Began were distributed to hundreds of thousands of Swedish teenagers, after it was selected by their peers as the book reluctant readers would be most likely to enjoy. In Australia alone, a country of less than 20 million people, John has sold over two and a half million books, making him a hugely successful and celebrated author.

John Marsden is an extremely talented writer and possesses a passionate and creative spirit. He has always been determined, with a will to encourage the creativity and honesty of the youth of today. He exposes his readers to the more intimidating or feared aspects in the world – such as war, and deals with them in a personal and eye-opening way. Marsden’s ability to connect with the readers and provide a realistic atmosphere to his stories is one that many writers dream to have been gifted with. John Marsden is and forever will be, a legendary author.