Terry Mulhern is an award winning writer and of fiction and nonfiction.
Terry has twice won won the Van Diemen History Prize . His 2022-23 winning essay A Difficult Birth: The Van Diemen’s Land Company 1824-25 was published in The Van Diemen Anthology 2023. His 2020-21 winning essay Insubordination and Improper Intimacy is available online at Forty South Tasmania and in print in Issue 101 of Forty South Tasmania Magazine and in The Van Diemen Anthology 2021. Terry was also a finalist in 2018/19. His essay St Valentine’s Tears was ‘Highly Commended’ and was published in The Van Diemen Anthology 2019.
Terry’s also writes historical fiction. His short stories about life in colonial Tasmania have been finalists in international and national competitions. Watch out for snakes was long listed for the Historical Writers’ Association (UK) Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition 2023 and was a finalist in the Sixfold Winter 2023 fiction competition (USA) and was published by sixfold in April 2024. Done Readin’ was long listed for the 2023 Mansfield Readers and Writers short story competition and appears in the MRW Soul anthology. The Flying Fish was short listed for the Tasmanian Writer’s Prize in 2022 and The Satchel in 2021. They appear in the 2022 and 2021 editions of the Forty South Short Story Anthology.
Terry’s column Lobster Tales appears quarterly in Forty South Tasmania Magazine. In it, he reveals Tasmanian history, people and culture as seen through the eyes of freshwater crayfish…
He has also published in The Conversation, Science Write Now, Pursuit, Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania and Australian Biochemist Magazine.
One of Terry’s obsessions is lutaralipina – Tasmania’s giant freshwater crayfish, Astacopsis gouldi. He has published research on the misconceptions surrounding its Aboriginal and scientific names, several magazine articles on it and he helped the Bob Brown Foundation build ‘Asta’ the GIANT giant crayfish puppet.
Terry splits his time between Somerset in northwest Tasmania (digging out thistles and blackberry) and Melbourne, where he teaches biochemistry.