Professor Nicholas Jose

A celebrated author and cultural critic, and currently Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard, Nicholas Jose was born in 1952, in London. He grew up in Broken Hill, Traralgon, Perth and mostly Adelaide, South Australia. A graduate of the Australian National University, Canberra, and Magdalen College, Oxford, he has travelled extensively in Europe and Asia. From 1986 to 1990 he worked in Shanghai and Beijing where he was Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy from 1987-1990. This first sparked his interest in literature and translation. From 2002 to 2005 Nick Jose was President of Sydney PEN. He held the Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide from 2005-08. In July 2008 he joined the Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney, with a Chair in Writing. He joins the English Department at Harvard University as Visiting Chair of Australian Studies 2009-10. He is General Editor of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (2009).

Nicholas Jose's most recent book is a novel, Original Face (2005). Black Sheep: Journey to Borroloola, a memoir, appeared in 2002. Other books include the novels The Red Thread (2000), The Custodians (1997), The Rose Crossing (1994), Avenue of Eternal Peace (1989; new edition 2008)and Paper Nautilus (1987; new edition, 2006), two collections of short stories, and Chinese Whispers, Cultural Essays published in 1995..