Roger is an Arts teacher in the First Year College.

For the past 30 years Roger has taught a range of humanities and social science subjects at various Victorian universities. Since 2012 Roger has been teaching in the First Year College at Victoria University, where in 2015 he was part of a teaching team that was awarded the Victoria University Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (Higher Education).

Roger is the author of two works of creative non-fiction and two novels, as well as a co-authored academic book on youth homelessness. His book Exile: The Lives and Hopes of Werner Pelz won the 2012 Western Australian Premier’s Award for nonfiction and was shortlisted for 2013 NSW Premier’s Douglas Stewart Prize for nonfiction. His novel Relatively Famous was shortlisted for the 2018 Mark & Evette Nib Award.

Areas of expertise

  • Creative writing
  • Life writing
  • Narrative theory
  • Social and philosophical impact of the digital revolution

Contact details

+61 (3) 9919 5171

Publications

Refereed journal articles 

The Story of a (Post-)Colonial Boy. Westerly, November 2010

Ancestral Ghosts: An Interview with Randolph Stow. New Literatures Review, 2003

Empathy, Externality and Character in Biography: A Consideration of the Authorized Versions of George Orwell. Clio: A Journal of Literature, History & the Philosophy of History, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 1-32, 2001

Biography, Contingency and Fate. Meridian vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 219-234, 1997

Books

Relatively Famous (novel). Transit Lounge Publishing, 2018

Exile: The Lives and Hopes of Werner Pelz (memoir/biography). Transit Lounge Publishing, 2012.

Keeping Faith (novel). Transit Lounge Publishing, 2010

Boy He Cry: An Island Odyssey (memoir). Transit Lounge Publishing, 2009

Moving Out, Moving On: Young People’s Pathways In and Through Homelessness. Co-authored with Shelley Mallett, Doreen Rosenthal & Deborah Keys. Routledge, 2010

Refereed book chapters

‘The Story of a (Post-)Colonial Boy’, Critical Essays on Randolph Stow, Kate Rendell (ed), UWAPress (forthcoming)

Professional experience

Professional memberships

  • Victorian Institute of Teaching

Appearances in the media

  • Excerpt from Relatively Famous, The Australian, 9 January 2019
  • Interviewed by Ellen O’Brien, Writers Victoria website, 28 March 2018: 
  • Broadcast of abridged recording of Boy He Cry, ABC RN, 22 February – 5 March 2009
  • Interviewed on ABC RN ‘Saturday Extra’ March 21, 2009