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Elliot Perlman was born in Melbourne in 1964, the son of second generation Jewish Australians of East European descent
He won his first short story competition at the age of 30.
His first novel, Three Dollars (published by Faber in the UK), won the 1998 Melbourne Age Book of the Year Award and the Betty Trask Prize.
His latest book is a collection of short stories, The Reasons I Won't Be Coming (published by Faber), which has just won Australia's Steele Rudd Award.
He's been described as "the foremost voice of the new generation of Australian writers".
Elliot currently lives in Melbourne and works as a barrister.
Work in progress
He is writing a second novel, Seven Types of Ambiguity, and the first section of this, The Emotions Are Not Skilled Workers, has been published in Granta 71.
Writers tip
He offers this advice for aspiring writers based on his novel-in-progress:
"There is a tendency in the middle of the writing of a novel for the writer to feel adrift, lost floating aimlessly in a rough uncharted ocean of words. You are too far from the beginning to feel the enthusiasm that set you on your way all those words ago and too far from the end to see the land of your completed tale where you may rest finally.
There are so many obstacles between you and your completed manuscript. Do not let this sense of aimlessness stop you from finishing. From my own limited experience, and of the many writers to whom I have spoken, I am convinced that this feeling is normal. While feeling it is no guarantee that your novel will be artistically, critically or commercially successful, neither is it a sure sign of failure.
When this feeling is engulfing you, remember the novels that have had the biggest effect on you as a reader. Look at those novels. Take them from your shelves. Flick through their pages. Remember the characters, settings, plots. Remember how they have made you feel.
Perhaps the manuscript on which you drift aimlessly now will come to be such a book for people you have never met. Dwell on this, that this could happen. Take a deep breath and go back to your page. Perhaps there is someone who needs you to tell this story."
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