Michael McGirr was born in 1961. He is the author of the best-selling Things You Get For Free, a comedy about travelling in Europe with his mother. Things You Get For Free was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction as well as for the Australian Booksellers' Award and the Vision Australia Audio Book of the Year. It has been published in both the United Kingdom and the United States. He has also, three times been a winner of the Age short story competition.
Michael is a regular columnist and reviewer for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Canberra Times and The Age.
From 1980 until 2000, Michael was a member of the Jesuit order, working as a Catholic priest from 1993 to 2000. During that time he was editor of Australian Catholics and publisher of Eureka Street. He once fell asleep during one of his own sermons. Normally, it was only his congregation that dozed off. Shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with a disorder. Then it was only his congregations who dozed off.
Michael is the fiction editor of the literary journal, Meanjin. In this capacity he has submitted a number of his own stories to the journal, thinking that if he didn't get a sympathetic reception from himself he didn't know where he would get one. But he rejected them all, so now he is no longer talking to himself.
Michael enjoys living in small town Australia. If he forgets who he is, there are people there who can remind him. Chief among them are his wife, Jenny, and their little boy, Benedict.
