Marsden, John (1950-…), is a popular Australian author of novels for young adults. Much of Marsden’s fiction deals realistically with young people faced with adult situations that may involve violence, sex, abusive parents, corruption, and injustice.
Marsden became particularly known for his seven-novel “Tomorrow” series (1993-1999). The series begins with Tomorrow, When the War Began (1993). In the series, a group of Australian teenagers return home from a camping trip to discover that their country has been invaded by an unnamed military force. The series is narrated by Ellie Linton, who describes how she and her young friends, cut off from their families, battle the invading force. Marsden continued the story with the trilogy “The Ellie Chronicles”—While I Live (2003), Incurable (2005), and Circle of Flight (2006).
Marsden established his reputation with his first novel, So Much to Tell You (1987). The story is told through the diary of a mute girl who was scarred as a child by acid her father intended for her mother. The novel won the Book of the Year award in the older readers category from the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) in 1988. Letters from the Inside (1991) describes the friendship between two girls, one of whom is in prison, who became pen pals. Winter (2000) is a story of a 16-year-old girl who investigates the deaths of her parents when she was 4. Marsden has also written the picture books Prayer for the Twenty-First Century (1997), The Rabbits and Norton’s Hut (both 1998), Millie (2002), and Home and Away (2008). The Rabbits won the CBCA’s Picture Book of the Year award in 1999. Marsden wrote a historical novel for adults called South of Darkness (2014).
Marsden was born on Sept. 27, 1950, in Melbourne. His family lived in towns in Victoria and Tasmania until they moved to Sydney in 1960. He received a diploma in teaching (1978) from Mitchell College and a B.A. (1981) from the University of New England, both in New South Wales. He held a number of jobs from about 1969 to 1977, including delivering pizzas and working on a chicken farm. From 1982 to 1990, Marsden taught at the prestigious Geelong Grammar School in Victoria. He found that the teenage boys he taught had no interest in reading. Marsden decided to write a novel that might appeal to them, leading to his first success. He became a fulltime writer in 1991 but remained a committed educator. In 2006, Marsden founded the Candlebark School, a private school located in a rural area north of Melbourne. In 2016, he opened the arts-focused Alice Miller School in the same area.
