John Morrison (writer)
John Gordon Morrison (1904–1998) was an English-born Australian novelist and short story writer.
Life
John Morrison was born in Sunderland, England in 1904 and migrated to Australia in 1923. Initially working on sheep-stations in New South Wales, in the 1930s he began a ten-year stint working on the Melbourne waterfront and subsequently joined the Communist Party.
He published his first stories under the name of "Gordon" in trade union magazines during this time. He was later a member of the Realist Writers Group and went on to publish two novels, four collections of stories and a book of essays.
After leaving the waterfront he worked as a gardener until 1963 when he became a full-time writer, publishing also book reviews and journalism. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society in 1963, the Patrick White Literary Award in 1986 and the Order of Australia in 1989.
He died in 1998.
Books
Novels
- The Creeping City (1949)
- Port of Call (1950)
Story collections
- Sailors Belong Ships (1947)
- Black Cargo (1955)
- Twenty-Three : Stories (1962)
- John Morrison, Selected Stories (1972)
- North Wind (1982)
- Stories of the Waterfront (1984)
- This Freedom (1985)
- The Best Stories of John Morrison (1988)
Non-fiction
- Australian by Choice (essays, 1973)
- The Happy Warrior (memoirs, 1987)