Patrick Gordon Holland is an Australian novelist and short story writer who has won several literary awards for his works about Australian bushrangers and Asian culture.

Biography

Holland grew up in

outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a ...

Australia working as a horseman for local station owners. He later moved to

Brisbane, Queensland Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

, where he attained his PhD at

Queensland University of Technology Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a public research university located in the urban coastal city of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. QUT is located on two campuses in the Brisbane area viz. Gardens Point and Kelvin Grove. The unive ...

, researching non-place, sacred place and Japanese religio-aesthetics. Holland is an assistant professor of humanities and creative writing at

Hong Kong Baptist University Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) is a publicly funded tertiary liberal arts institution with a Christian education heritage. It was established as Hong Kong Baptist College with the support of American Baptists, who provided both operati ...

. He is a founding member of the Asia Pacific Writers and Translators Association and was a judge of the 2016

Commonwealth Short Story Prize The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is awarded annually for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2,000 to 5,000 words). The prize is open to citizens of member states of the Commonwealth of Nations aged 18 and over. The Commonwealth Shor ...

Literature

Holland's writing is influenced by

Greek Orthodoxy The term Greek Orthodox Church (Greek: Ἑλληνορθόδοξη Ἐκκλησία, ''Ellinorthódoxi Ekklisía'', ) has two meanings. The broader meaning designates "the entire body of Orthodox (Chalcedonian) Christianity, sometimes also call ...

, to which he converted, and his experiences working in Asia and outback Australia. He has described his writing style as

minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post– World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...

, and also 'ambient' with reference to Japanese literature, in particular the works of

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal a ...

and Yuki Kurita. * ''The Mary Smokes Boys'' ( Transit Lounge, 2010), is a novel about a band of young disenfranchised horse thieves and the young sister of one of them. The novel employs a prose technique based on Arvo Pärt's tintinnabuli technique of musical composition and Biblical dirges. It was longlisted for the

Miles Franklin Award The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1 ...

and shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year Award. * ''The Source of the Sound'' (Salt, 2010) is a short story collection that won

Salt Publishing Salt Publishing is an independent publisher whose origins date back to 1990 when poet John Kinsella launched ''Salt Magazine'' in Western Australia. The journal rapidly developed an international reputation as a leading publisher of new poetry ...

's 2010 Scott Prize and was shortlisted for the

Steele Rudd Award The Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were an Australian suite of literary awards inaugurated in 1999 and disestablished in 2012. It was one of the most generous suites of literary awards within Australia, with $225,000 in prize money across ...

. * ''The Darkest Little Room'' (Transit Lounge, 2012), is a novel about

human trafficking Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extr ...

set in

Ho Chi Minh City , population_density_km2 = 4,292 , population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2 , population_demonym = Saigonese , blank_name = GRP (Nominal) , blank_info = 2019 , blank1_name = – Total , blank1_ ...

. * ''Navigatio'' (Transit Lounge, 2014) is a novelistic meditation on the ''Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis'' (or ''The Journey of St Brendan'' (circa AD 900)), which assumes the form of a semi-ordered collection of Medieval manuscripts. * ''One'' (Transit Lounge, 2016) is a novel that imagines the final days of the

Kenniff brothers Patrick Kenniff (28 September 1865 – 13 January 1903) was an Australian bushranger who roamed western Queensland, Australia, with his brother James Kenniff (1869–1940). They were primarily cattle thieves, but the brothers were found guilty o ...

, Australia's last

bushrangers Bushrangers were originally escaped convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who used the bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term had evolved to refer to those who took up "robbery under ...

, on their escapades in

Western Queensland Western Queensland encompasses the three western regions in the Australian state of Queensland: * North West Queensland, often known as Gulf Country; * Central West Queensland; and * South West Queensland. History Karuwali (also known as '' ...

. The novel was longlisted for the 2018

International Dublin Literary Award The International Dublin Literary Award ( ga, Duais Liteartha Idirnáisiúnta Bhaile Átha Chliath), established as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, is presented each year for a novel written or translated into English. ...

References

External links

''The Source of the Sound''
Salt Publishing
Transit Lounge

''Meet an Aussie Author - Patrick Holland''

''Official Home Page''

* ttp://bookloverbookreviews.com/2014/11/interview-patrick-holland-author-navigatio.html ''Interview - Patrick Holland discusses 'Navigatio 1977 births Living people 21st-century Australian novelists Australian essayists Male essayists Australian male novelists Australian male short story writers 21st-century Australian short story writers 21st-century essayists 21st-century Australian male writers Hong Kong Baptist University faculty Eastern Orthodox Christians from Australia Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy {{Australia-writer-stub