Critically acclaimed author Trent Dalton honoured by University of Southern Queensland, named Fellow of the University

Critically acclaimed author Trent Dalton first arrived at the University of Southern Queensland looking to escape his turbulent upbringing, but what he found were tools to understand the people around him and celebrate their stories.

Former Courier Mail journalist and award-winning author Trent Dalton was named a Fellow of the University at the University of Southern Queensland on September 26, 2024.

As a young man fleeing a turbulent upbringing in Brisbane’s Bracken Ridge, Trent Dalton enrolled in a media studies bachelor at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba in the ’90s looking for a way to better understand the life he was born into.

Both of his parents had served time in jail, and were scarred by drug addiction.

“I was trying to work out why certain people did certain things, why people made the choices they made,” he said.

In one of his first classes he was handed a tape recorder by lecturer Neil Mudge and told to hit the streets and find a story.

Dalton has carried that lesson through his career, first as a Courier-Mail feature writer and later as the author of the three critically acclaimed books.

“In my book, Boy Swallows Universe, the kid wants to become a journalist because he’s surrounded by criminals and he keeps seeing people he knows in the newspaper,” Dalton said.

“That was true for how I grew up, my old man would throw me the paper and say, ‘ah look Slim’s made the paper again’.

“I got hooked on crime journalism when I was 10 because I wanted to work out why some guy got put away in Boggo Road Prison.

“I was always hoping the journalists would work out that they were good people. And they would never quite go deeper to work that out.”

Former Courier-Mail journalist and award-winning author Trent Dalton was named a Fellow of the University at the University of Southern Queensland on September 26, 2024, pictured here with Chancellor John Dornbusch.

After 20 years of telling difficult stories, Dalton was honoured for that work when he was named an Honorary Fellow, at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba on Thursday.

While Dalton never finished his degree, he said his time at the university taught him to listen deeply.

“I swear that’s all I’ve done for 24 years,” he said.

“I was always the guy in the newsroom who they’d tap on the shoulder and I’d just be up for stuff.

“The editor would have to fill a hole in the newspaper and I’d just go out and find a stranger, just like Neil Mudge told me to do back in ’98.

“Every person can offer an incredible story if you just put that person up on a pedestal, like they are the most important person in your world at that moment.

“We can’t have every story coming out of Sydney, that would be a disaster.

“It is so important that the voices of Toowoomba and regional towns across Australia are being heard.”