John Bryson

John Bryson AM (25 December 1935 – 5 February 2022) was an Australian author and lawyer. He wrote works of fiction, biography and non-fiction.

Life Bryson was born in Melbourne on 25 December 1935. He attended the University of Melbourne, where he studied law.

Career In 1971, after practising law for 10 years, first as a solicitor and later as a barrister, he became chairman and managing director of a Melbourne public company. In 1978, he rejoined the Victorian Bar. He was a member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council, later becoming acting chairman.

Works Since 1973, Bryson's articles and stories have been published in Australian newspapers.

Bryson's best known work is his 1985 book Evil Angels: The Case of Lindy Chamberlain which chronicles the story of Lindy Chamberlain's trial for murder, following the Death of Azaria Chamberlain. It was made into a film of the same name starring Meryl Streep in 1988. It was released under its original title in Australia and New Zealand and as A Cry in the Dark in other English-speaking territories, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and South Africa. It is also known by similar titles internationally.

Bryson was also the author of a 1981 collection of short fiction, Whoring Around, and a collection of reportage, Backstage at the Revolution. His novel of the Spanish Civil War, To the Death, Amic, was published by Viking in 1994 and as Hasta la Muerte, Amigo by Editorial Milenio Spain in 2006. In 2004 he originated and co-produced Secrets of the Juryroom, a documentary for SBS-TV.

In 2013, he was published in eBook format for his works of both fiction and non-fiction. Many of the non-fiction titles included collections of articles he had published as a journalist.

He died in Sydney on 5 February 2022, at the age of 86.

Awards 1979 The Routine, one of the stories that was later included in Whoring Around, received the 1979 Patricia Hackett Award at the University of Western Australia 1985 Victorian Premier's Award for non-fiction 1986 Allen Lane Award 1986 Nettie Palmer Prize for Australian Nonfiction 1986 British Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger 2000, a panel of journalism schools included him in "The 100 Australian Journalists of the Century".