JOHN HUGHES
Dr. John Hughes (born 1961) is a Sydney-based Australian writer and teacher. His
first book of autobiographical essays, The Idea Of Home, published by Giramondo
in 2004, was widely acclaimed and won both the New South Wales Premier's
Literary Awards for Non-Fiction (2005) and the National Biography Award (2006).
Hughes was born in Cessnock, NSW to a father of Welsh descent, and a mother who
was of Ukranian descent. Hughes states that as a second generation Australian he,
"lived in two worlds as a child": one world the routine, real world of
Cessnock and the second the exotic foreign world of his European family's past.
The sense that he was foreign became central to his sense of self. He felt
connected to an imagined past of his grandparents. As a child stories were told
to him of how his grandparents fled Kiev during the Second World War and had
walked on foot across Europe to Naples. From Naples, they emigrated to
Australia. The text in "The Idea Of Home" is devoted to the stories of this
journey passed down from Hughes' grandfather, and their impact on a young John
Hughes.
Hughes undertook a medical degree, but shortly realised it was not for him. He
switched to an undergraduate arts degree at Newcastle University in the late
1970s , and at the end of his Honours year, was offered the Shell Scholarship
to Cambridge. His preconceived notions of Europe as a place vastly more
sophisticated than his provincial Cessnock prompted him to go. However, as he
spent more time in England, and struggled through a PhD on Coleridge, he
realised that his ideas were wrong, and that provincialism was, if not as
obvious, certainly still as potent in what was considered the centre of the
academic world. After this, he gave up his "life of letters", as he called it,
and returned to Australia.
Back in Sydney, he unsuccessfully tried to teach at his old university,
Newcastle, but his failure at Cambridge haunted him. He did, however, complete a
PhD thesis at UTS, called "Memory and Forgetting". Hughes now teaches at
Sydney Grammar School, where he is Senior Master in English and Senior
Librarian. He took a position in the English Department of Sydney Grammar in
1995, under Townsend, who was soon replaced by one of Hughes' colleagues at
Cambridge, Dr. John Vallance, as Headmaster.
Hughes has been published in HEAT Magazine, edited by Ivor Indyk, and runs
Sydney Grammar's Creative Writing Group.
Dr. John Hughes (born 1961) is a Sydney-based Australian writer and teacher. His
first book of autobiographical essays, The Idea Of Home, published by Giramondo
in 2004, was widely acclaimed and won both the New South Wales Premier's
Literary Awards for Non-Fiction (2005) and the National Biography Award (2006).
Hughes was born in Cessnock, NSW to a father of Welsh descent, and a mother who
was of Ukranian descent. Hughes states that as a second generation Australian he,
"lived in two worlds as a child": one world the routine, real world of
Cessnock and the second the exotic foreign world of his European family's past.
The sense that he was foreign became central to his sense of self. He felt
connected to an imagined past of his grandparents. As a child stories were told
to him of how his grandparents fled Kiev during the Second World War and had
walked on foot across Europe to Naples. From Naples, they emigrated to
Australia. The text in "The Idea Of Home" is devoted to the stories of this
journey passed down from Hughes' grandfather, and their impact on a young John
Hughes.
Hughes undertook a medical degree, but shortly realised it was not for him. He
switched to an undergraduate arts degree at Newcastle University in the late
1970s , and at the end of his Honours year, was offered the Shell Scholarship
to Cambridge. His preconceived notions of Europe as a place vastly more
sophisticated than his provincial Cessnock prompted him to go. However, as he
spent more time in England, and struggled through a PhD on Coleridge, he
realised that his ideas were wrong, and that provincialism was, if not as
obvious, certainly still as potent in what was considered the centre of the
academic world. After this, he gave up his "life of letters", as he called it,
and returned to Australia.
Back in Sydney, he unsuccessfully tried to teach at his old university,
Newcastle, but his failure at Cambridge haunted him. He did, however, complete a
PhD thesis at UTS, called "Memory and Forgetting". Hughes now teaches at
Sydney Grammar School, where he is Senior Master in English and Senior
Librarian. He took a position in the English Department of Sydney Grammar in
1995, under Townsend, who was soon replaced by one of Hughes' colleagues at
Cambridge, Dr. John Vallance, as Headmaster.
Hughes has been published in HEAT Magazine, edited by Ivor Indyk, and runs
Sydney Grammar's Creative Writing Group.