Biography

Born in 1943 in Sydney, Dr Bruce Russell now lives in Fremantle, Western Australia. He began writing in mid-life and soon found success with short stories like "Dire Straits Rules" (selected for Frank Moorhouse’s Fictions 88, ABC Books).

Following his relocation to Perth in the early nineties, he placed stories in Westerly and The Western Review before turning his attention to the semi-autobiographical Jacob’s Air, which won the 1995 TAG Hungerford Award against stiff competition. This first full-length work was dedicated to Bruce’s brother James, who took his life in 1984.

For the next three years, Bruce researched the origins of psychodrama for what was to become The Chelsea Manifesto. Beginning with a residency at Varuna, he travelled to the United States where he interviewed Zerka Moreno, Jacob Moreno´s widow and then torch bearer for the original group therapy. In New York, he fell in love with the Chelsea Hotel, a setting which would have continuing echoes in his work and life.

Then came an offer too good to refuse – a year in New York as Mr Mum while his wife Robyn Bett took up a scholarship in drama therapy at New York University. In Brooklyn, Bruce heard the call of Henry Miller, the local boy who went to Paris and stunned the literary world with Tropic of Cancer. The family’s move to a sublet at the Chelsea failed to quell the rush of Millerisms that seemed to be pouring out of Bruce’s pen.

Back home, he rewrote and reworked the material that had flowed so easily in New York. Channelling Henry became Russell’s first crime novel, in which the audacious idea that a living writer might channel a dead one is played out in a setting of deceit and thuggery that has provoked both local and American readers and reviewers.

In 2007, Bruce completed his fourth novel, The Museum of the Self, and successfully submitted it as the creative component of his PhD through the University of Queensland. The novel is expected to be published in 2009 as "Mick´s Museum".

Bruce is currently a board member of the Australian Society of Authors. With illustrator Frane Lessac, he also shares the position of WA representative. Visit the ASA website