James Cowan (author)
| James Cowan | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1942 Melbourne, Australia |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Notable awards | ALS Gold Medal 1998 |
| Relatives |
James Cowan (great grandfather) |
| Website | |
| james-cowan |
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James Cowan (born 1942) is an Australian author. James Cowan is author of a number of internationally acclaimed books, including A Troubadour's Testament and Letters from A Wild State. In 1998 he was awarded the prestigious Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal for his novel, A Mapmaker's Dream. His work has been translated into seventeen languages.
Born in Melbourne, Australia, Cowan completed his studies in Sydney. His first published works were Nine Poems (Mauritius, 1964) and A Rambling Man (Sydney, 1966). In the 1960s he travelled and worked in Mauritius, Vancouver, New York, Paris and London. For some years he lived in Marrakech, and in Libya, studying the Berber and Tuareg peoples. Returning to Australia in 1973, he decided to view his homeland as a foreign country. He made journeys throughout the continent, sometimes on horseback, exploring early European culture and its imprint on the land. This led to a succession of books, The Mountain Men, The River People, and Starlight's Trail.
In the 1990s, James spent two years living in Balgo Hills, a remote Aboriginal settlement in the Tanami Desert. From there he relocated to Cortona in Italy where he lived for three years. More recently he has been living in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
James Cowan then began a ten-year study of the Aboriginal culture that led him to work, study, and finally live among Aborigines in the Center, the Far North and the Kimberly region. This resulted in a series of books that explored Aboriginal themes: Mysteries of the Dreaming, Myths of Dreaming, Sacred Places, The Aboriginal Tradition, Two Men Dreaming and finally Messengers of the Gods all found their inspiration in traditional cultural perspectives that the author encountered during his journeys.
To that end he made numerous trips throughout Australia, the Pacific islands, Borneo and the Celebes to deepen his understanding of how the mythic imperative works in present-day tribal societies.
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