Paul Radley

Paul Radley was the recipient of the 1981 Australian/Vogel Literary Award.

Background

Born and raised in Newcastle, NSW, by the time Paul Radley was 16 years old, having dropped out of school a year earlier, he took a job as a storeman at David Jones.^[1]

Writing career

The book that Radley received his award for was called Jack Rivers and Me. It was a story that was about the lower Hunter Valley residents, with a focus on five-year-old Peanut and his imaginary friend Jack Rivers. Once he received the $10,000 prize, the book was published by Allen and Unwin and it received wide critical acclaim. Following that the Literature Board of the Australia Council presented him with a writer’s fellowship. This led to the publication of two more novels by Radley.^[2] He was also a writer-in-residence at St. Andrews University, Scotland, where he received a fellowship from the Literature Board.^[3]

Acclaim

After he won the Award, Radley was portrayed by the media portrayed as being “a young man who, after an indifferent education, had somehow found the assurance, style and craft to write a prize-winning novel. He also seemed to need his family around him a great deal, especially his great uncle Jack."^[4] In addition, he was praised for having “highly individual talent.”

Controversy

In March 1996 Radley caused quite a stir when he claimed he had actually not had anything to do with any of the authorship of Jack Rivers and Me, and hadn’t written anything. Instead, his great uncle Jack Radley had written it all but was too old to enter the competition. In May of that year, Jack confessed that he’d assembled the manuscript from materials had been used in his own unpublished stories. He did say however that Paul had made a significant contribution by taping conversations that were used in the manuscript. So Paul hadn’t really done much at all. Jack asked his great nephew to enter the competition on his behalf also as part of a crusade against age discrimination.^[5]

References