BIO
© James Brickwood 2021
Lech Blaine is a writer from country Queensland. His childhood was the feature of a Conversations with Richard Fidler episode about the foster care system.
Lech’s work has been published in a range of places including Best Australian Essays, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin, The Griffith Review, The Guardian, The Lifted Brow and The Monthly. He was an inaugural recipient of a Griffith Review Queensland Writers Fellowship. In 2017, he won the Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award. In 2019, he was awarded a Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Emerging Artist Fellowship.
Lech wrote most his first book Car Crash: A Memoir while running a three-star motel in Bundaberg. Car Crash is a memoir about a fatal head-on collision that killed three teenagers in 2009. It examines the private lives hiding inside a public tragedy. Lech stumbles through a lucky country where car crashes compete for front-page coverage with flu pandemics, political coups and flash floods, but where family breakdown and mental illness remain taboo subjects.
Car Crash: A Memoir will be published by Black Inc. Books in April 2021.
Lech Blaine 
Hi Lech, I just want to say that I really enjoy your writing. I stumbled across your works via twitter (Chris Murphy), so who said social media delivers nothing!
Keep writing, you are bloody good!
Hey Lech,
I just read your story in The Lifted Brow. I enjoyed it a lot. I love your writing style. Look forward to reading more.
Happy new year!
Robyn
Listening to you on conversations! Wow what an interesting life! Read another price online keep up the great writing!!
Just listened to conversations also & wow, what an eventful life so far. I now look forward to reading your publications. Happiness to all.
Lech it was great listening to you on ABC Conversations today. You have a great gift of story telling.
I was enthralled. I look forward to reading your works but would much rather get the audio with you narrating.
Wishing you all the best for your future xx
I just listened to you on Conversations-you are a wonderful storyteller. I so look forward to reading your book! All the best.
You write good, young man!
I have just finished “Hillsong’s strange tides”. Well researched and well written. Thanks.
I don’t think I’ve ever Googled a magazine writer before, but felt compelled to after reading your Hillsong piece in The Monthly and remembering your name from last year’s article on how Queenslanders voted in the general election.
The Hillsong piece was masterful. The writing was non-judgemental, but the facts – as you so artfully arranged them – less so.
Please keep doing exactly what you’re doing!
HI Mate, listened to you on “Conversations”. So clear and articulate. Came away with alot to think about. Thanks
HI Lech, I just listened to your conversation with Richard Fidler this morning and I enjoyed it very much and glad you are in the world. Thanks
Hi Lech, just finished car crash after hearing you on Betooda. Was a really nice read especially for a young Australian male and even had me in tears. Cheers.