Ross Fitzgerald

Well-known Australian writer, broadcaster, academic and political commentator, Professor Ross Fitzgerald writes regularly for The Weekend Australian newspaper and The Canberra Times; regularly reviews for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Weekend Australian, and appears on ABC Radio, ABC TV, The Alan Jones Show, Sky News and Channel 7.

Emeritus Professor in History and Politics at Griffith University, Ross Fitzgerald has published thirty-nine books, most recently the co-authored comic novel ‘Going Out Backwards: A Grafton Everest Adventure’ (Hybrid Publishers, Melbourne); the edited version of Alan Reid’s ‘The  Bandar-Log : A Labor novel of the 1950s’ and the edited collection ‘Heartfelt Moments in Australian Rules Football’, both published by Connor Court in Brisbane.

He is best-known for his memoir ‘My Name is Ross : An Alcoholics Journey’, published by NewSouth Books in Sydney and which is available as an e-Book and a Talking Book, read by Ross.

He also wrote ‘The Pope’s Battalions: Santamaria, Catholicism and the Labor Split’, published by University of Queensland Press; and ‘Growing Old (Dis) Gracefully: 35 Australians Reflect on Life over 50’, co-edited with his wife Lyndal Moor which was published in 2008 by ABC Books. He is co-author of ‘Alan (“The Red Fox”) Reid’ published by New South Books; ‘Fools’ Paradise : Life in An Altered State’, published by PressOn/Arcadia in Melbourne, and ‘Austen Tayshus:Merchant of Menace’, published by Hale & Iremonger in Sydney.

In 2009 Ross co-authored ‘Made in Queensland: A New History’, published by University of Queensland Press, and ‘Under the Influence: a history of alcohol in Australia’, published by ABC Books/Harper Collins. In 2010 he wrote ‘My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey’ and co-authored ‘Alan (“The Red Fox”) Reid’, both published by New South Books.

Irelands president Mary Robinson and Ross

Up to now, his four best-selling books are ‘The Footy Club’, three other books about Aussie Rules – ‘The Greatest Game’; ‘Australia’s Game’; and ‘Heartfelt Moments in Australian Rules Football’; and especially ‘My Name is Ross: An Alcoholics Journey.’

Other non-fiction works include ‘The Federation Mirror’: Queensland 1901-2001?; ‘Seven Days to Remember: The Worlds First Labor Government’; ‘Fred Paterson, “The Peoples Champion”- Australia’s Only Communist Party Member of Parliament’; and ‘”Red Ted”: The Life of E.G. Theodore’, which was short-listed for the NSW Premiers Prize and for the National Biography Award.

Professor Fitzgerald is also the co-author of ‘Labor in Queensland’; contributing co-editor of ‘Partners’, and of ‘Fathers in Writing’, and contributing co-editor of two other collections of essays, ‘The Eleven Deadly Sins’ and ‘The Eleven Saving Virtues.’ 

Ross’s fictions include  ‘Going Out Backwards: A Grafton Everest Adventure’ (Hybrid Publishers, Melbourne, 2015); ‘Fools’ Paradise: Life in an Altered State’ (PressOn/Arcadia, Melbourne, 2012); ‘Soaring: a novel’, (Angus and Robertson, 1994) which won the Eros Foundation erotic Book of the Year Award for 1994; ‘Busy in the Fog: Further Adventures of Grafton Everest’, published in Australia by Macmillan, 1990 (released in Pan paperback, 1991); ‘All About Anthrax’, (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1987), published in London by Corgi-Bantam’s “Black Swan” Series, 1989; ‘Pushed from the Wings: An Entertainment’, (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1986), published in London by Corgi-Bantam’s “Black Swan” Series, 1989; and a book of poems: ‘The Eyes of Angels’, with an Introduction by David Holbrook (Sydney: The Saturday Centre, 1973).

Professor Fitzgerald’s memoir ‘My Name is Ross : An Alcoholic’s Journey’; his  Grafton Everest novels ‘Going Out Backwards: A Grafton Everest Adventure’; ‘Pushed from the Wings: An Entertainment’ and ‘Busy in the Fog : Further Adventures of Grafton Everest’,  and his Erotic Novel of the Year ‘Soaring’ are all now available as E-books.

‘My Name is Ross’ is also available as a Talking Book from Vision Australia , read by Ross.

Professor Fitzgerald is co-producer and script editor with Ian McFadyen of “Kerensky and Nelle” — a movie about Alexander Kerensky and Nelle Tritton. He is also working on a TV documentary, ‘Stories from the Great Australian Labor Split of the mid 1950s’ and a TV documentary about recovery from alcoholism, ‘Last Drinks’, co-written and co-produced with his Brisbane-based friend Neal Price.

Now living in Redfern, Professor Fitzgerald is married to Lyndal Moor. They have one child, Emerald, who is 34 and lives in New York and a grandchild. Ava Yeats Gruin – who was born on August 31, 2016.

Lyndal and Ross