Sandy McCutcheon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sandy McCutcheon (born 1947) is a prominent Australian author, playwright, actor, journalist and broadcaster.
Sandy McCutcheon was born in Christchurch, New Zealand which, however, he did not discover until he was over fifty years old. He was adopted at a very young age and spent several years looking for traces of his family around Europe, before finding relatives living in New Zealand. Incidentally, his adoption papers, uncovered in 1997, stated that he was born with the name Brian David Parry. He moved to Australia in 1970 and now lives in Brisbane. He spends time each year in the city of Fes in Morocco where he owns a house with his wife the photographer Suzanna Clarke.
Sandy McCutcheon was till late 2006 the host of a popular talkback radio program Australia Talks Back since renamed "Australia Talks" on ABC Radio National . Australia Talks Back is the only whole-continent talkback radio program. It has also gathered listeners from around the world through the internet and Radio Australia shortwave broadcasts. It runs for an hour every weekday and attracts a wide variety of audiences, who discuss a particular topic every day, reviewing the week's topics on Friday.
Before Radio National, Sandy has been a presenter on ABC's Double Jay, later Triple J, now an Australia-wide radio station. Before that he worked at radio stations in Townsville and Hobart.
Sandy has produced many documentaries for the radio in countries around the world, including Bosnia, China, Finland, Malaysia, Mozambique, Singapore, South Africa, Sudan (North and South) and Yugoslavia.
Sandy is a very energetic radio presenter, having been awarded Australian radio awards and recognised at the New York International Radio Festival.
Sandy has been awarded the International Kalevala Medal for services to Finnish culture (for his work on the Kalevala). He has worked in Finland on a scholarship, and in particular, at the Finnish Broadcasting Company.
Sandy has written 22 plays (at least) for the theatre. He won the Samuel Weisberg Award in 1991 for the best Jewish play of the year for 'Night Train', as he had for a long time believed himself to be Jewish, prior to finding out the truth about his ancestral past.
Sandy has founded the Illusion Farm, based in Tasmania mountains. It is a Buddhist centre providing care for people in need, free of charge. It has accommodated for more than 3000 people during its operation. The Illusion Circus Theatre Company has also been based on the farm.
Sandy has written a number of bestselling novels. His first, In Wolf's Clothing (1997), was the runner-up in the 1995 HarperCollins National Fiction Prize out of 400 novels. His other novels include
- Peace Crimes (1998)
- Poison Tree (1999)
- Safe Haven (2000)
- Delicate Indecencies (2002)
- The Haha Man (2003)
- The Cobbler's Apprentice (to be published September 2006)
- Black Widow (2006)
Black Widow is based on events following the September 1, 2004 terrorist attack on a Russian school in the southern town of Beslan.
Other books by Sandy are Blik! (2002), an illustrated book for children and Quirky Questions (2000) New edition of More Quirky Questions (2005) Sandy has also written many short stories and poems. His memoir, The Magician's Son was published in 2005 by Penguin. A new edition will be published in mid-2006
