Holden Sheppard

Holden Sheppard is an award-winning author born and bred in Geraldton, Western Australia. His debut novel Invisible Boys (Fremantle Press) was published in 2019 to both critical and commercial success. Invisible Boys has won multiple accolades including the 2019 West Australian Premier’s Prize for an Emerging Writer, the 2018 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award and the 2019 Kathleen Mitchell Award. In 2020, Invisible Boys was shortlisted for both the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and was named as a Notable Book by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. The novel has been optioned for film and television by AACTA award-winning director Nick Verso (Nowhere Boys, Itch, Boys in the Trees) and producer Tania Chambers OAM (Kill Me Three Times, A Few Less Men). ​ Holden’s novella Poster Boy was a winner of the nationwide Novella Project competition in 2018. His writing has been published in Griffith Review, Westerly, page seventeen, Indigo Journal and the Bright Lights, No City anthology (Margaret River Press, 2019). He has also written articles for 10 Daily, the Huffington Post, the ABC, DNA Magazine and FasterLouder (now Music Junkee). After graduating with Honours from Edith Cowan University’s Writing program, Holden won a prestigious grant from the Australia Council for the Arts in 2015. He currently serves as Deputy Chair of WritingWA, and as an ambassador for Lifeline WA. He is represented by Gaby Naher of Left Bank Literary. A lifelong misfit, Holden is a punk, a gym junkie, a player of both Aussie Rules football and Pokemon, and a bogan who learned to speak French. He lives in Perth with his husband.