Coverdale was born in Alice Springs, and grew up in places even Australians call ‘remote’: cattle stations in Queensland and the Territory; farm towns of the southern wheat belt. He read whatever the mail truck brought, and felt the pull of foreign lands. He disappointed his father by choosing to work with words rather than cattle and travelled far and wide.

Since settling in Melbourne with an impetuous Pole, he has paid for his writing life by teaching in high schools and universities. He currently teaches academic writing at Deakin University, and recently completed a PhD in creative writing that pulled him into 18 months research in the grim aisles of Warsaw’s communist secret police archives. He is the co-author of two marvellous boys who lack any interest in books, but share his love of sport and the outdoors. 

His fiction and poetry have appeared regularly in Australian and international literary journals and anthologies, including Les Murray’s selection for Another English: Anglophone Poems from Around the World (2014). This website hosts a selection of his published work.