Hello, and welcome to my website

Derek Mortimer

I write adult short stories, young adult fiction, children’s books, and journalism.

I live in Sydney, Australia, but I grew up in Bradford, Yorkshire, the then, industrial north of England, a place of mills, mines and muck.

But beyond the cities were sweeping moors that seemed to go on forever, an exciting landscape for a boy to explore. Which is probably why when I moved to Australia I fell in love with the great open spaces of the Snowy Mountains – and the sea, for ocean swimming is also a journey across space.

I love travelling. In 2018 I visited India, where I spoke on literature of the diaspora at O P Jindal University, near Delhi, and at Osmania University, Hyderabad. Other recent trips were to Greece, Canada, and Morocco, a fascinating country in an amazing continent. I have travelled the Silk Roads of Central Asia; Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, countries with vast snow-capped peaks, arid plains, and an amazing mix of cultures, people who over the centuries have move back and forth across a vast land mass in wars and migration.

Nearer home —  a camping journey through the Kimberley region of West Australia, a dramatic part of this amazing island continent, rich in indigenous history.

Probably because I do travel a lot and live in a country where about a quarter of us were born somewhere else, I am fascinated by the movement of people as they seek a better life, or flee persecution as refugees. I want to tell their stories, and the stories of those who are receiving them, or rejecting them.