About me.

Since 1990, Michael McGirr has reviewed over 1000 books for The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times. Michael has been twice a recipient of a senior fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts. He has been an official guest of the Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra writers’ festivals.

He has been chair of judges of the National Biography Award and chair of judges of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and a judge of numerous other literary awards.

Michael has been the fiction editor of Meanjin and publisher of Eureka Street.

Michael’s books have sold over 200,000 copies. They include:

·       Books that Saved My Life (Text 2018)

·       Snooze: the Lost Art of Sleep (published by Picador in 2009 and a revised edition by Text in 2016; published in USA by Pegasus in 2016)

·       Bypass: the story of a Road (Picador, 2003). This was a VCE Literature text for 2 years and a VCE English text for four years.

·       Things You Get For Free (Picador 2000; revised edition Scribe 2012)

·       Finding God’s Traces (Jesuit Publications 2002 with several revised editions)

·       Tim Winton: the writer and his work (Macmillan, 1998)

·       Forty Days to Freedom (John Garratt, 2018)

·       Doorways into hope and Joy (John Garratt, 2020)