Richard Harland was born in Yorkshire, England, then migrated to Australia at the age of twenty-one. He was always trying to write, but could never finish the stories he began.

Instead he drifted around as a singer, songwriter and poet, then became a university tutor and finally a university lecturer. But after twenty-five years of writer’s block, he finally finished the cult novel, The Vicar of Morbing Vyle. When he contracted his next book to a major publisher, he immediately resigned his lectureship to follow his original dream.