Читать книгу Cull - Stafford Ray - Страница 4

Stafford Ray was born into a deeply religious, fundamental Exclusive Brethren family, where access to music and reading should have been limited to classics, hymns, the Bible and other religious texts, but his maternal grandmother, Eusebia, an Internationalist, thought otherwise. His father encouraged his interest in music.

By fourteen, he was reading the Complete Works of Shakespeare and at sixteen was introduced to Charles Darwin at Parramatta High School. Darwin was smuggled in and read in secret, but so began an intense interest in science and how things really worked, along with the drive to write.

Trained as a teacher, but already recognised as a musician, composer and arranger, he was in heavy demand in Sydney recording studios and on television, back when TV stations had their own orchestras. When there was time, he began writing musical plays for classroom use and is currently developing a drama-based literacy program that could revolutionise how reading is taught.

Cull was conceived as a play, set in the White House, in which much the same scenario was to be planned, but his daughter, Julia, a gifted teacher, advised him to use the novel form to tell the story because, as she said: “Dad! Nobody reads plays and this story needs to be told!”

Stafford Ray is currently writing a second novel that could be an interplanetary parallel to Cull, with its own heroes, villains and environmental vandals.