Philip McLaren

Philip McLaren (born 1943) is an Aboriginal Australian author and academic known for literary fiction, detective stories and thrillers.

Biography McLaren is an Aboriginal Australian of the Kamilaroi people. Both of his parents, who have some Scottish heritage, are from Coonabarabran, New South Wales. He was born in Redfern, Sydney.

He has worked in a range of occupations, including as an illustrator, designer, animator, sculptor, copywriter and creative director in television, advertising and film production companies. Over a period of 12 years he lived and worked in Canada, USA, England, New Zealand and the Bahamas.

McLaren was a member of the working party involved in the creation of the First Nations Australia Writers Network (FNAWN) in 2012.

He has worked as a lecturer at Southern Cross University. Four of his novels have been translated and distributed internationally.

Awards Sweet Water – Stolen Land received the 1992 David Unaipon Award for Australian Indigenous literature. voted by students at Lycée-Collège d'État Émile Letournel, a high school in the French overseas territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. It was also nominated at the Ned Kelly Awards for crime writing. Lightning Mine (HarperCollins, 1999) – thriller There’ll be New Dreams (Magabala Books, 2001) – historical fiction Murder in Utopia West of Eden