Craig Sherborne Memoirs

Another writer worth getting to know is Craig Sherborne. A former journalist, an essayist, playwright, poet and memoirist, Sherborne seems to have an unusually golden touch: pretty much everything he writes is worth reading.

He is a regular contributor to The Monthly, writing on a diverse range of topics from horse trainers to social justice, from repo men to trivia quiz freaks. Most of his pieces for the magazine are available only to subscribers, although his 2007 pre-Melbourne Cup piece on trainer Brian Mayfield-Smith is freely accessible by clicking here.

But it's his memoirs, two so far, that really brought Sherborne to critical attention. Hoi Polloi (shortlisted in both Queensland and Victoria for the Premier's Literary Awards) and Muck are beautifully judged tales of his childhood, first in New Zealand then Australia, with his cringe-making, social-climbing mother and father. Sherborne is as unsparing of his own cloddishness as he is of his parents, and his sure touch means that while he nails the humour inherent in his strange family, he underpins it with sharp-eyed observation of the world outside their door. If ever there were a life one would want to see mined further in print, Sherborne's is it. In the meantime, catch up with his story by reading the first chapter of Hoi Polloi here .

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