Mark Mordue - Boy On Fire: The Young Nick Cave

Mark Mordue's much anticipated book Boy on Fire is a profound, profane and poetic biography of the early formative years of the dark prince of Australian rock 'n' roll, Nick Cave. As well as painting a vivid portrait of this singular artist, it is also a fascinating social and cultural biography. 

Mark will appear in conversation with Michaela Kolowski.

This FREE event takes place on Zoom. The Zoom meeting details form part of your ticket, emailed to you after registration.  

Pre-order copies of Boy on Fire and we'll happily ship them anywhere in Australia for free!  Publication date is 18 November.

About the Book

A deeply beautiful, profound, profane and poetic biography of the early formative years of the dark prince of Australian rock 'n' roll, Boy on Fire is Nick Cave's creation story. This is the story of the artist first as a boy, then as a young man. A deeply insightful work which charts his family, friends, influences, milieu and, most of all, his music, it reveals how Nick Cave shaped

himself into the extraordinary artist he would become.

As well as a powerfully compelling biography of a singular, uncompromising artist, Boy on Fire is also a fascinating social and cultural biography, a vivid and evocative rendering of a time and place, from the fast-running dark river and ghost gums of Wangaratta, to the nascent punk scene which hit staid 1970s Melbourne like an atom bomb, right through to the torn wallpaper,

sticky carpet and the manic, wild energy of nights at the Crystal Ballroom.

A passion project nearly a decade in the making, Boy on Fire is one of the most eagerly anticipated Australian music biographies, it is also a labour of love for its writer Mark Mordue. With unprecedented access to Nick, his family, friends, and fellow musicians, and featuring never-before seen early photographs, Mordue has accomplished a stunning work of biographical

achievement, as befitting its legendary subject

Praise

'A wonderfully alive picture of this tumultuous time in modern Australian music ... they glint with vitality and humour ... written with mercurial flair' -  Books+Publishing

About the Author:

Mark Mordue is an Australian writer, journalist and editor. He is a co-winner of the 2014 Peter Blazey Fellowship, which recognises an outstanding manuscript in the fields of biography, autobiography or life writing. His work has been published in Interview, Madison, Speak, The Nation and Salon, as well as Rolling Stone, Vogue, GQ, The Australian, and The Sydney Morning Herald. Mark was the winner of a 1992 Human Rights Media Award and the 2010 Pascall Prize for Critical Writing. From 1992 to 1997, he was the founding editor of Australia's leading pop culture magazine, Australian Style. His poetry, fiction, essays and memoir work have appeared in literary journals such as HEAT, Meanjin, Griffith Review and Overland in Australia.

About the Moderator:

Michaela Kolowski is an interviewer, facilitator and presenter. She is a regular interviewer/facilitator at Sydney Writers’ Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Sydney Jewish Writers Festival, Rose Scott Women Writers’ Festival, UNSW, for local libraries and community organisations. She's also presented programs and conducted interviews for ABC Radio National, Local Radio and Classic FM. Her recent interviews include Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Trent Dalton, Julia Baird, Michael Connelly and Tim Flannery. In June 2020 she curated ABC Radio National’s first ever on-air writers’ festival, The Big Weekend of Books.