Dal Stivens

Australian writer

Dallas George "Dal" Stivens (31 December 1911 – 15 June 1997) was an Australian writer who produced six novels and eight collections of short stories between 1936, when The Tramp and Other Stories was published, and 1976, when his last collection The Unicorn and Other Tales was released.

He was born in Blayney, New South Wales, and grew up in West Wyalong where his father worked as bank manager. His observances of life in depression era country Australia were to become important to his later writing, and in particular to the folk tales for which he became famous in the 1940s and 1950s. Stivens served in the army during the second world war, on the staff of the Australian Department of Information. He moved to England after the war and was press officer at Australia House in London until 1950. Upon his return to Australia he became a tireless worker for the rights of authors based on the work he had observed from the Society of Authors in England. He was Foundation President of the Australian Society of Authors, in 1963 and was involved in the creation of the Public Lending Right in 1975. Stivens also wrote under a number of stories and many newspaper articles under the pseudonyms Jack Tarrant, John Sidney, Sam Johnson and L'Arva Street. after many years of domesticity in Lindfield, NSW, with Juanita Cragen, to whom he left his literary estate. On her death in 2007, Juanita left the estate to the Australian Society of Authors as the Dal Stivens Bequest. and Fisher Library at the University of Sydney. The Dal Stivens Award was inaugurated in 2007 and is presented every two years to a writer 30 or younger for an essay or literary short story.