27 Facts About Richard Harland

Richard Harland is an Australian fantasy and science fiction writer, academic, and performance artist, living in New South Wales, Australia.

Richard Harland was born in Huddersfield, United Kingdom and migrated to Australia in 1970.

Richard Harland is best known for his Eddon and Vail science fiction thriller series, the illustrated Wolf Kingdom series for children and three YA steampunk fantasies: Worldshaker, Liberator and Song of the Slums.

Richard Harland has been awarded the Australian Aurealis Award on six occasions for his fiction.

Richard Harland migrated to Australia in 1970 to take advantage of this opportunity.

Richard Harland published poetry and short stories during this period in a number of literary magazines.

Richard Harland returned to academic life in the 1980s through a tutoring position at the University of New South Wales and continued work on his doctoral thesis, which was published by Methuen as Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism in 1987.

Richard Harland taught at Wollongong for ten years before resigning to become a full-time fiction writer.

Richard Harland scored an early success in childhood with a short story that won a prominent United Kingdom competition.

Richard Harland wrote and distributed stories while at school, exchanging ongoing installments for sweets and other tokens, when other pupils were reluctant to part with legal tender.

Richard Harland is best known for several series of novels, but commenced his novel writing career relatively late in life.

Richard Harland had been eager to write full length tales from late childhood but suffered from writer's block, which prevented him making significant headway with novel projects for much of the next 25 years.

Richard Harland once attributed his writer's block partly to his belief that he had to write serious literary novels rather than what he found most enjoyable to work on.

Richard Harland was still lecturing at Wollongong when he wrote The Dark Edge, the first instalment in the Eddon and Vail series.

Richard Harland's senior lecturing role was a secure tenured position, much sought after by other professional scholars.

Richard Harland has confessed to a fascination with maps: he states that he sometimes spends hours studying them.

Richard Harland has admitted to often viewing his fictional worlds as though seen from an elevated distance, something he feels is a common feature among fantasy writers.

The first volume, The Vicar of Morbing Vyle, was Richard Harland's first published novel.

In preparation for writing the trilogy, Richard Harland extensively researched angels and cosmology, including both the mainstream and unorthodox sources of Christian, Islamic and Judaic lore on the subjects.

Richard Harland was particularly concerned to present angels as awe inspiring, beautiful and numinous beings.

Richard Harland liked to have angels possess personalities that allow for the reader to empathise, yet be far removed from 'Disney-fied' images of sweetness-and-light.

Richard Harland returned to this book numerous times since to help with inspiration for all the books in the trilogy.

Richard Harland wrote the story, and Laura Peterson provided illustrations for each chapter.

Richard Harland has been selected to become the next commander of the craft, but is forced to question his world when a girl who has escaped from the lower decks, seeks his help and reveals to him the poverty and exploitation below the elite world of his upbringing.

Richard Harland began developing the ideas for Worldshaker in the mid-1990s and took five years to write the novel, passing through 3 complete rewrites.

Richard Harland investigates and finds the angel Miriael, semi-conscious and awaiting extinction.

Richard Harland has published over 20 short stories and novellas in magazines and anthologies in the United States, Australia, Canada and France.