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Travels From:
Melbourne
Fee Range: B
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Don Watson is one of Australia's most distinguished writers and public speakers. He was born in Warragul, grew up on dairy farm and attended school at Poowong and Korumburra. He took his undergraduate degree at La Trobe University and a Ph.D at Monash and was for ten years an academic historian. He has written three books about Australian history before resigning to write, among other things, satire for TV and the stage.
For five years Don combined writing political satire for Max Gillies with writing political speeches for the Victorian Premier John Cain. In 1992 he became Paul Keating's speech-writer and adviser. In addition to regular books, articles and essays, in recent years he has also written feature films, including The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis.
His best-selling account of the Keating years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating Prime Minister, won the Age Book of the Year and Non-Fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year.
Don's 2001 Quarterly Essay Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Essay Prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Death Sentence, his book about the decay of public language, was also a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. It was published in the US in May 2005. His latest book is Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words.
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