The ASA was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of John Marsden. John had an extraordinary impact on the Australian literary community, and was a longtime member of the ASA.

John Marsden was passionate about young people – he believed in them, respected them – and he spent his life advocating for them. 

Born in 1950, John grew up across New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania, eventually ending up briefly at Sydney University before dropping out. His own education wasn’t always easy. In his late twenties, he discovered teaching and fell in love with educating young people. 

When John noticed a growing lack of interest in reading in teenagers he decided to write for them, noting a growing genre in the American market specifically targeted at this age. His debut book So Much to Tell You, published in 1987, was an instant success, winning the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year: Older Readers. 

John went on to write or edit over 40 books, the vast majority for young people, including picture book The Rabbits in 1998 with Shaun Tan. 

Shaun Tan said, “I’ll always be grateful for John’s kind encouragement, patience and openness, and to my editor Helen Chamberlin for the introduction. Best wishes to John’s family, friends and students, and all those whose lives he changed for the better, through empathy and challenge and story, asking us to be dangerously curious, to not turn away, to see others, to see other ways of seeing, to embrace the risk of caring about all of it – simply because it’s the right thing to do.”

He is most widely known for the seven-book series Tomorrow, which started with Tomorrow When the War Began in 1993, and has been made into both a feature film and a television series.

Current Australian Children’s Laureate, Sally Rippin, wrote about John’s passing for The Age, saying, “He wasn’t afraid to write into dark places and explore the underside of what it meant to be human, and for this he attracted criticism along with generations of young readers who felt seen and understood. No one who read his work was unaffected….I don’t know of any other writer as deeply interested and invested in childhood and education as John.”

Award-winning author, Markus Zusak, echoed this in a post on Instagram, writing, “John Marsden leaves behind a body of work that made generations of young people in Australia fall in love with books. His great superpower (among others) was that he could think, write, feel, speak and inhabit life as a teenager – and he changed the lives of generations of kids in the process. Make no mistake: we lost a giant of Australian Literature this week. So many of us felt like we were writing in his shadow, but that darkness was always there. He was leading us into the light.”

John has won every children’s literary award in Australia, and has been awarded the Lloyd O’Neil Award for contributions to the Australian publishing industry, and the prestigious Buxtehude Bull, Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and Dromkeen Medal internationally. He has sold over 5 million copies of his books worldwide and has been translated into 15 different languages. Most notably though, John has affected the reading and writing of generations of young people in the last 40 years, who felt seen and understood for the first time in his words. That impact continues today. 

Author and co-host of The First Time Podcast, Kate Mildenhall said, “Like so many writers & readers I felt exhilarated, seen, inspired by Marsden’s books…  It was John who made me believe that being a writer was not only possible, but important, necessary even. Sometimes we don’t realise the profound influence a person has on us until they are gone.” 

In a tribute to John for The Guardian, Alice Pung wrote, “John Marsden was a literary and educational giant, but as a friend and mentor he was someone very special – someone who instinctively understood the most vulnerable-feeling person in a room, including a first-time Chinese-Cambodian author who could present onstage but couldn’t look any individual adult in the eye because she’d been taught that this was culturally rude.” 

Despite his publishing successes John continued to teach and be involved in education his entire adult life, eventually starting two schools – Candlebark in 2016 and the Alice Miller School in 2016. While he had stepped down as principal within the last couple of years of his life, he still lived on the property and attended lunch at the school each day and taught Year 7 English until his death last December. 

Author Andy Griffiths said Marsden’s “ability to connect with teenagers was truly phenomenal and his dedication to expanding their imaginations and horizons through his bestselling books and innovative schools was inspirational,” in a statement to The Sydney Morning Herald.

There have been lively debates over the years about his educational philosophies, but John always maintained his belief in treating young people with dignity, respect, and ensuring the development of their imagination in all aspects of life.

The ASA pays fond tribute to John’s enduring support of our organisation. We offer our heartfelt condolences to all who knew and loved him. Vale.