Archie Weller Biography

Australian part-Aboriginal writer, born in Subiaco, Western Australia; he grew up in bush country just south of Perth. As a teenager he lived in East Perth, a poor area of ‘bikies, methos, migrants and Aboriginal families’. He went through secondary education, and studied for a year at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University of Technology), Perth, but left to write The Day of the Dog (1981). A biting account of contemporary urban poverty and violence, it also captures the desperate humour that is the last resort of those whom society ignores. Going Home (1986), a collection of short stories, captures the life and language of its characters with force and confidence. Weller has also written commissioned poems, plays, and film scripts, including the screenplay First Citizen (1988) about the famous Aboriginal artist Albert Manatjira. He is the editor, with Coleen Francis-Glass, of Us Fellas: An Anthology of Aboriginal Writing (1987).