AUTHOR

Craig Bolland tells his own story: "I was born in Brisbane in the safe, suburban seventies. I grew up in the leafy western suburbs, where I'd do a lot of staring out the window daydreaming about things. I always wanted to be a writer. For a long time as an early teenager, I wondered if I was an alien.

"My fantasies often revolved around the mothership reappearing to whisk me off to a lifetime of galactic high adventure. I did less geeky stuff too. I was a yuppie for a while, and then a goth, and then a yuppie again, and then some weird pastel-and-stonewash wearing fashion trainwreck. Hey, it was the eighties. Eventually I stopped worrying quite so much about what other people thought. I wasn't a nerd, or a jock, or any such thing at school. If anything, I was spectacularly unspectacular.

"As an adult, I woke up a bit and really started getting excited about life. I have worked mostly in consulting and training. I started writing again about five years ago, and was lucky enough to get some small bits of recognition. That gave me the encouragement to keep going. I worked on a few films, and saw my work performed on stage.

"I then moved on to writing books, which was always my dream. I have a quiet spiritual side. I love travel. I like to get away once a year and do the kinds of things I don't get to do at home. I've been thrown in jail in Outer Mongolia, have stayed with Tamil Tigers and communist insurgents, and chewed the fat with head hunters, refugees, shamans and monks. I once had a pistol put to my head in a Manilla methamphetamine lab."

Craig's first novel, I KNIT WATER (UQP) was released (after independent publishing) in 2002. It is a tale of twenty-
something Mark Heron, and his life and neighbours in Brisbane's West End. As thier world is turned upside down, Mark finds that he'll either go under or pull his diverse tenants together. I KNIT WATER was the only work of fiction short-listed for the emerging writers category of the Queensland Premiers Literary Awards in 2002.

His second novel, a tale of travel in outer Mongolia entitled THE GREAT WORK OF BLISS, is about to be published.

Craig is available for workshops and presentations in the Brisbane area and throughout Queensland.