VALE FRANK MOORHOUSE

The death of Frank Moorhouse AM on Sunday, 26 June 2022 is mourned by all at Cameron's Management. As the first client of the late literary agent - and his dear friend, Rose Creswell at Cameron's, Frank took delight in jesting that he "was also the most trouble". 

Born in the coastal town of Nowra, NSW, Frank wrote fiction, non-fiction, screenplays and essays and edited multiple collections of writing. He won major prizes for the short story, the novel, the essay, and for script writing. His work has been published in the United Kingdom, France and the United States and also translated into German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Serbian, and Swedish. 

Frank is perhaps best known for winning the 2001 Miles Franklin Literary Prize for "the Edith Trilogy" (Dark Palace 2000, Grand Days, 1993 and Cold Light, 2011). Grand Days won the South Australian Premier’s Award for Fiction and, as well as winning the 2001 Miles Franklin Award, Dark Palace was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Age Book of the Year Award. Cold Light won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards in 2012 and was shortlisted for the 2012 Miles Franklin Literary Award.

The Australian's chief literary critic, Geordie Williamson best sums up Frank as, "an icon of the libertarian tradition. He rode the various waves of post-war culture with intelligence and elan...His contribution to the culture is impossible to overstate. He had a Rabelaisian spirit also, delighting in the intellect, the spirit and the body.” 

Always gracious and charming, a keen observer and generous listener, Frank’s legacy is a remarkable literary canon and the mentoring of younger writers.