Nick Earls is a Northern Ireland-born Australian writer and novelist. He became famous as the author of comic popular fiction stories for adults, youngsters, and children telling about daily life. Many of his novels are set in a city of Brisbane, Australia.
Background
Nick Earls was born as Nicholas Francis Ward Earls on October 8, 1963, in Newtownards, County Down, United Kingdom. He is a son of John Earls, a management consultant, and Angela Earls (maiden name Sloan), a medical practitioner. Earls has a sister.
When Nick was a ten-year-old boy, the family moved to Australia and settled down in Brisbane, Queensland.
Reading and storytelling have always occupied the important place in the life of Earls. Nick wrote his first novel at fourteen.
Education
Nick Earls received his general education at the Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane. After, he entered the University of Queensland where he obtained Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees in 1986.
Nick Earls’s path to writing wasn’t short. Having a medical diploma, he started his career in 1987 working as a suburban general practitioner and medical editor. His first collection of short stories, ‘Passion’, was published by the University of Queensland Press in 1992. The debut had almost no success but provided the young man with an agent. So, Earls stayed faithful for his teen hobby of creating short stories, and combined medical practice with freelance writing.
A short story writer and freelance advertising copywriter, he never thought he would be writing for the teen market. It was until early 1993 when he was asked to produce a story for the fifteen to eighteen age group. The task was a kind of challenge for Earls, but soon he dealt with it and found his niche in literature - fiction. The main character of the completed story didn’t leave the author’s imagination, and Earls contemplated other stories he could tell about this boy.
The successful young adult novel ‘After January’ narrated in the first person by its teen protagonist was published in 1996. The book was hailed by both critics and readers. Another novel titled ‘Zigzag Street’ repeated the triumph later the same year.
Nick Earls left medicine completely and concentrated on writing and editing. His bestsellers include ‘Bachelor Kisses’, ‘48 Shades of Brown’, ‘Perfect Skin’, ‘World of Chickens’, ‘The True Story of Butterfish’, and ‘Analogue Men’ among others. One of his recent works is the Wisdom Tree series of novellas.
The writer has also gifted some stories for the four famous anthologies of the ‘Girls' Night In’ series. He has edited ‘Kids' Night In’ and ‘Kids' Night In 2’ as well. In addition, Earls has collaborated with many periodicals, such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald.
Achievements
Nick Earls is a prolific fiction writer who has authored twenty-six books published in Australia, United States, the United Kingdom, and in several European languages in other countries.
His works have been compared with the writings of Nick Hornby, Raymond Carver, Martin Amis, VS Naipaul, JD Salinger, Woody Allen, David Mitchell, and Jeffrey Eugenides.
Two of Earls’s stories, ‘48 Shades of Brown’ and ‘Perfect Skin’ were adapted into movies in 2006 (in Australia) and 2008 (as ‘Solo un Padre’ in Italy). ‘48 Shades of Brown’ was selected as the book of the year by Kirkus Reviews. Besides, five of his novels have been adapted to plays by Brisbane's La Boite Theatre Company.
Nick Earls has been a recipient of such awards as Betty Trask Award, Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award, Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal, eLit Book Award, People’s Choice Award at New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, and Australian Book Design Award. His ‘After January’ was many times shortlisted for prestigious awards, and was included by the International Youth Library, Munich, in its White Ravens selection of international notable new books.
There is a reference to Nick Earls in the 2007 Australian romantic comedy ‘All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane’.
Quotations:
"'I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up."
"The best is that the job [of an author] is the perfect mix of secluded, indulgent thinking time and being flown around to talk to and meet readers. It’s 80 percent tracksuit, 19 percent top-shelf tee shirt and one percent glamour. That ratio works for me."
"Every new story starts out as a puzzle I don’t quite know how to solve yet, and it’s solving that puzzle that I can’t resist."
"I’m itching, always, to get better to discover new, smart, subtle ways of doing things. I’m not sitting on any work-in-progress and thinking it’ll match, say, Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North. I’m sitting with a clutch of developing ideas that fascinate me, wanting to give each one everything I can when its turn comes."
"I’ve realised that it’s okay to use regular things to build up my characters from small, straightforward, and often appealing parts. And I like it when people come up to me and say they related to something in one of my books, when they write to me and say they’ve felt that way too, and that it really meant something to them when they saw it in writing."
"While ‘write what you know’ sounds like a cliche, I think I now know what it means. I don't feel compelled to write only what I know (I do, after all, have an imagination), but I think I’ve learned to value what I know, and I think I’m a better writer because of that. I also don’t think it limits me. While After January and Zigzag Street are set in a Queensland coastal town and in a Brisbane suburb they are, ultimately, stories about people. I hope I’ve made the places real, but I hope I’ve made the people real, too. If I’ve done that, the stories can be read anywhere."
"The struggle to balance life is a problem for almost all of us – anyone with a gadget fights a different battle to maintain balance this century. We’ve entered a time of permanent contactability without ever meaning to and without knowing how to deal with it."
Membership
The writer has taken an active part in charity for children. He was among the founding members of the Australian branch of the international aid agency War Child. He has contributed to fundraising anthologies of the foundation and has stood at the origins of a War Child/Rotary project aimed to recharge the school libraries of the Solomon Islands with about 10,000 books gifted by Australian publishers. He has been a benefactor of Hands on Art and honorary ambassador for the Mater Foundation, the Abused Child Trust (known currently as Act for Kids), and the Pyjama Foundation.
Personality
Nick Earls is a perfectionist who is always searching for new directions in his profession.
Physical Characteristics:
Nick Earls has a slim figure.
Connections
Nick Earls married Sarah Garvey, a legal policy officer, on April 13, 1991. In 2010, Nick and Sarah adopted a boy from China and named him Patrick.
