David Brooks

David Gordon Brooks (born 12 January 1953 in Canberra) is an Australian author. He graduated from the Australian National University in 1974. He married Alison Summers in 1975. Brooks and Summers then studied abroad and received their M.A. degrees from the University of Toronto. Brooks completed his Ph.D from the University of Toronto after returning to Australia in 1981 while teaching at the Royal Military College, Duntroon located in Canberra. In 1982 he began teaching at the University of Western Australia in Perth, Western Australia, where he met the poet Nicolette Stasko, who became his partner for the next twenty years. In 1986 he returned to the Australian National University as a lecturer, a post he held for the next four years. Brooks currently is an associate professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney. He married the Slovenian translator and photographer Teja Pribac in 2005.

He is also a co-editor along with Elizabeth McMahon for Southerly, Australia’s oldest literary magazine.

His novel, The Fern Tattoo, was shortlisted for the 2008 Miles Franklin Award.