Leon Carmen
Australian author
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Background
Carmen grew up in Torrens Park in Adelaide and attended Unley High School.[2] His father died when he was fourteen.[1]
Carmen married at age 20, however the marriage ended in divorce.[2]
He played keyboard in various bands including Red Angel Panic,[2] and has had a number of jobs, including: public servant, taxi-driver, and fruit-picker.[1]
In around 1995, Carmen moved to Sydney.[2]
My Own Sweet Time
In 1994 the Aboriginal publishing house Magabala Books published My Own Sweet Time,[3] supposedly a biographical account by the author Wanda Koolmatrie—an Aboriginal woman born to the Pitjantjatjara people in 1949.[4] The book details how Koolmatrie was taken from her mother in 1950 to be raised by white foster parents,[4] and thus became one of the Stolen Generations. In 1996 the author received the Dobbie Literary Award for the work.[5]
When Koolmatrie offered Magabala a sequel to the book in 1997, the publisher discovered the hoax and the affair was made public.[6] The fact that "Koolmatrie" turned out to be a white Australian taxi driver named Leon Carmen turned into a "national scandal".[6][7] In a later interview, Carmen said that he was trying to break into the literary market and believed he could not have got his book published without the subterfuge.[2]
Carmen states that his friend and agent, John Bayley, was aware of the plan to write the work under a pseudonym, and helped to select the novel's title.[2] In 1997, a "Brief of Evidence" regarding "the 'Wanda' Case" was compiled by the NSW Police against Bayley.[5] In 2004 Bayley published a book about the affair, Daylight Corroboree: A first-hand account of the "Wanda Koolmatrie" hoax.[8]
The first edition of My Own Sweet Time included supportive quotes on the rear cover from the Australian author Dorothy Hewett and from the Australian academic and author Philip Morrissey[9]—without the latter's permission.[10] The work was included in an anthology of Australian autobiography, and was used as a text for the NSW Higher School Certificate examination.[5]