BOYD OXLADE was born in Sydney, and educated by the Jesuits in Ireland and at Xavier College, Melbourne. While at boarding school he developed a love of reading and began to write fiction.

Oxlade attended Monash University in Melbourne during the heady years of student protests, then lived in Carlton—for a time in a converted chicken shed—before the suburb became gentrified. He worked occasionally as a cook and as a gravedigger, but was mostly on the dole: once for nine years straight.

Hoping in vain to make some money, Oxlade wrote Death in Brunswick. It was published by Heinemann in 1987 and acclaimed for its finely tuned comic depiction of Melbourne’s ethnically diverse northern suburbs.

He co-wrote the screenplay for a film adaptation of the novel with the director John Ruane. Released in 1991, the movie starred Sam Neill, Zoe Carides and John Clarke, and became a cult hit. Its grave-digging scene remains one of the most famous moments in Australian cinema.

Oxlade subsequently wrote screenplays and stories, ‘mostly with no success’. He has had poems published in overseas magazines, and has returned to work on a project called ‘Ron Elms, the Flying Butcher of Alamein’.