Luke Carman is an Australian fiction writer and academic. He is known for his collection of semi-autobiographical stories, which is entitled ''An Elegant Young Man''. The stories are set in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

, Australia, a suburb outside

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

. He has been called a post-grunge lit writer, a reference to an Australian literary genre from the 2000s which emerged following the 1990s grunge lit genre.

Career

''An Elegant Young Man''

His first book, ''An Elegant Young Man'', won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for New Writing. ''An Elegant Young Man'' is a collection of short stories that are linked together, and which are semi-autobiographical. The stories have a

protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a st ...

whose name is also Luke and who lives in the author's hometown. Carman stated that he used Liverpool, Australia, as a setting because Australia's "western suburbs have been largely absent from the face of Australian fiction", with an effort to show the "...ugliness of working class suburbia and the pain of being an outsider" with "...authenticity, warts and all." In one of the stories, a teen who "...dreams of fame fade into an adulthood of blue collar work"; the narrator/author is described as a "...passive force, constantly in the midst of the action but solely as an observer who cannot save anybody", as if in "

paralysis Paralysis (also known as plegia) is a loss of motor function in one or more muscles. Paralysis can also be accompanied by a loss of feeling (sensory loss) in the affected area if there is sensory damage. In the United States, roughly 1 in 50 ...

", until characters' lives are "quietly lost to monotony." In another story, a female character who faces an abusive relationship becomes addicted to drugs. Carman used a "writers’ network" to hold discussions about draft versions of the book and perform the drafts, which helped him to develop his writing

Other activities and awards

He is a casual academic at

Western Sydney University Western Sydney University, formerly the University of Western Sydney, is an Australian multi-campus university in the Greater Western region of Sydney, Australia. The university in its current form was founded in 1989 as a federated network ...

's Writing And Society Research Centre. In 2014, the ''

Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper i ...

'' named him the Best Young Novelist. One of his stories, "Liverpool Boys", is used in the SBS podcast series entitled '' True Stories'', which showcases what SBS calls "Australia’s best emerging and early-career writers." He has published in ''HEAT'', ''Westside'' and the ''Cultural Studies Review''. ''Intimate Antipathies'', a collection of his essays was published in July 2019 by Giramondo, while a further collection, ''An Ordinary Ecstacy'', was published in 2022.

Essay on Melbourne's literary scene

In 2016, Carman's essay on the

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

literary scene attracted international attention. An article in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' stated what while "Australian creative industries are in crisis... Luke Carman’s galvanising and venomous essay has started the wrong conversation" with his essay, a "jeremiad against the Melbourne literary scene that was published in the journal ''

Meanjin ''Meanjin'' (), formerly ''Meanjin Papers'' and ''Meanjin Quarterly'', is an Australian literary magazine. The name is derived from the Turrbal word for the spike of land where the city of Brisbane is located. It was founded in 1940 in Brisbane ...

''. Carman's essay criticizes "arts administrators at creative institutions – journals, festivals, funding bodies and hubs", who he states are "anti-artists". Ben Eltham states that top arts administrators may earn higher salaries than the poorly-paid writers. At the journal ''Overland'', Emmett Stinson stated that the "response o the essayhas been overwhelmingly negative"; however, he stated that for "...all of its hyperbolic rhetoric, the essay is a call for a limited form of underclass literary revolt – and the studied refusal of a creeping professionalisation" in the writing world.

References

External links