About Ben

Publications

Quillblade: Volume One of the Voyages of the Flying Dragon, (Random House Australia, September 2010) Beast Child: Volume Two of the Voyages of the Flying Dragon, (Random House Australia, September 2011) Short Fiction “There Have Always Been Five,” The Read Book: An Anthology of South Australian Creative Writing, ed. by Tim Silk (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2002) 152-157. Academic Work “Predictable Plots and Secondary Worlds: Teaching Creative Writing through Modern Fantasy,” The Creativity and Uncertainty Papers: The refereed proceedings of the 13th conference of the Australian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP, 2008) <http://aawp.org.au/creativity-and-uncertainty-papers>. “Barthes’ Final Fantasy: Final Fantasy VII and the Writerly Text,” Final Fantasy and Philosophy, ed. by Jason P Blahuta and Michel S Beaulieu (Oxford and New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). “Alchemic Heroes,” Anime and Philosophy, ed. by Josef Steiff and Tristan Tamplin (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing, 2010).

Ben lives mostly in worlds of his own creation but occasionally misses the real world and comes home to Adelaide. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing and has published academic work on popular culture, video game narrative theory, Japanese heroism, anime & manga, and creative writing pedagogy. Ben loves heroes, villains, comic books, and video games, and he believes you can learn more from watching cartoons than you can from the news.