Alan Whelan

Alan Whelan is a novelist, poet and award-winning story writer living in the Blue Mountains in NSW, Australia.

His story, "Wilful Damages" was awarded the Tuliptree Short Story Prize, 2020, and appears in the anthology, "Stories that Needed to be Told, available on this site. Tuliptree nominated "Wilful Damages" for The Pushcart Prize, and is currently in competition.

His story, "There is" was short-listed for the Newcastle Short Story Award 2020, and appears in their 2020 anthology, available through Amazon.

Here’s where writers say they’ve knocked around a bit.

So Alan Whelan says, truthfully, he’s been a probation officer, a house painter, a tenants’ union organiser, factory worker, a political activist, sexual therapist, builder’s labourer, PR hack, farm hand, writer, editor and researcher. He’s driven forklifts in a fruit market and written policy and legislation for governments. He once had a job sexing chickens, which is less criminal than it sounds.

He believes in clarity. He is not “in love with words”. If you read one of his sentences and you don’t know what it means, or a page and you don’t know what just happened, it means he’s written it badly.

A principle: the struggle between people who mean well and are trying to do the right thing is more real, also more interesting, than struggles between “good” and “evil”.

When he's not writing he walks in his mountains. He loves his mountains.