Welcome to Nathan Hobby’s blog! This blog is about the art of biography, the life of Australian novelist, Katharine Susannah Prichard and other things which interest me, including reflections on history, books, film, politics, mortality, and found objects. It began in 2007 although I had another similar blog from 2003 to 2006 which was lost when the platform Modblog disappeared.

I’m a writer, scholar, and librarian living in Perth, Western Australia with my wife, Nicole, and our children, Thomas and Sarah. My novel, The Fur, won the T.A.G. Hungerford Award and was published by Fremantle Press in 2004. My second book, The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard, was published by Miegunyah Press in 2022 and won the 2023 WA Premier’s Prize for Book of the Year. I work as the special collections librarian / archivist at Curtin University’s John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library. I am an honorary research fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Western Australia and completed my PhD there in 2019. I also hold a Master of Arts in Creative Writing and a Graduate Diploma in Information Science.

I came to biography after writing a novel for my MA about a biographical quest. I realised biography is a genre which combines the appeal of narrative with the allure of the archives and the hope of capturing the past. Living out her long life a century ahead of me, much of it in Perth, Katharine Susannah Prichard intrigues me. She was a woman of generosity, passion and paradox. She was a great novelist who brought to life communities in her fiction, from timber workers in the south-west of WA to a family circus. Politics was key to her life; she was a founding member of the Australian Communist Party, and lived her life by her convictions. She was also a wife and then widow to a war hero, Hugo Throssell; his suicide followed that of her own father.

The National Library of Australia selected this blog for preservation in its PANDORA web archive project.

I am available to give talks and run workshops on a variety of topics, including the life and legacy of Katharine Susannah Prichard and biographical research and writing. I can be contacted by email at nathanhobby@gmail.com.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS

The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard (Miegunyah Press, 2022) [biography]
– Winner WA Premier’s Prize for Book of the Year (2023)

The Fur (Fremantle Press, 2004) [novel]
– Winner TAG Hungerford Award (2003)
– Shortlist for YA section of WA Premier’s Award (2004)

Vose Seminary at Fifty: From “Preach the Word” to “Come, Grow,” Preston, Vic.: Mosaic Press, 2013. [editor of book with John Olley and Michael O’Neil]

ESSAYS AND STORIES

“‘As My Great Day Approaches’: Katharine Susannah Prichard in 1969.” Westerly 64.2 (2019). [creative non-fiction]

“Archaeologist,” Westerly Special digital issue: Crossings (2017) [creative non-fiction]

“Relics of Kattie,” Studio (2016) [creative non-fiction]

“‘The Memory of a Storm’: The Wild Oats of Han and the childhood of Katharine Susannah Prichard, 1887 to 1895,” Westerly 60.2 (2015): 116-128. [essay]

“The Zealot” (Review of Australian Fiction, 2014) [novelette]  – available as an ebook for $2.99.

“Immortalities” [novel] and “Biographical quest in the Twenty-first Century: the origins and future of a genre reconsidered” [dissertation], University of Western Australia, MA Thesis (2013) – available as a PDF.

“A History of Vose Library.” In Vose Seminary at Fifty 140–58. Preston, Vic.: Mosaic Press, 2013. [essay]

“Death in the Present Tense.” Studio 117 (2010): 19–26. [short story]

“The Tragedy of Robert Wadlow.” DotDotDash 2 (2009): 32–33. [creative non-fiction]

VIDEOS

The Early Life of Katharine Susannah Prichard – my thesis in three minutes (2017)