Biography

Peter Wigg is an Australian psychiatrist who has worked for extended periods in Papua New Guinea, Nigeria, Iraq and Jordan, and visited hospitals and development projects in India and Sri Lanka. He has a lifelong interest in transcultural issues. In England in the 1980s he became a university lecturer and worked in student health services. Subsequently, as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in Melbourne, he took a particular interest in the efforts towards self-realisation of disaffected young adults from diverse cultural backgrounds. These parallel interests – in developing countries and in the personal development of young Australians – inform his writing. 

He edited a student magazine at university, and has published journal articles and numerous conference papers during his career. He is respected as a teacher, and for several years provided talks on mental health topics for community radio. He began creative writing in the 1990s, attending courses at Holmesglen TAFE where his teachers included authors Alex Miller and Jenny Dabbs. He has had two short stories published in Quadrant – selected by Literary Editor Les Murray – and a short play staged successfully in Melbourne. 

The View from Ibadan is his first novel, and he is currently writing a second one set in the Middle East.