by Ken Piesse

Not many of us are lucky enough to spend our life doing what we love. In Ken Piesse’s case, his passion for sport fills and fuels his professional and personal life. For over 60 years he has played, watched, written about, analysed, commentated on, discussed, and dreamed about, sport. He is Australia’s most prolific sports author, having published 88 books, many of them bestsellers. Now he turns the lens on himself, in Living the Dream he introduces us to the kid who attended Sheffield Shield matches at the MCG with his father from the age of 9, was obsessed with the 1965 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack he got that Christmas (reading and re-reading its 1042 pages) and borrowing all 18 of Parkdale Library’s books about cricket, lovingly arranging them on the shelf in his bedroom and imagining they belonged to him.

“Like me, Ken reckons cricket is the best game ever invented. His writings bring us all closer to the action and gives everyone the best seat in the house.” Ricky Ponting

Starting out as a cadet, decades as a sports journalist honed Ken’s skills as a writer and gave him an enviable network of contacts. He enjoyed locker room access after nail-biting ‘you wouldn’t read about it’ finals, meeting and interviewing sporting legends, and traveling the world hosting tours and covering Test cricket in England, NZ, South Africa and the West Indies. His capacity to recall facts and figures, vivid memories of matches and games, and his deep understanding of sporting codes – particularly cricket and footy – gave Ken’s writing an immediacy and authenticity that readers responded to. His popular columns such as War and Piesse and Memory Lane had huge followings and in time, he became a ‘go to’ ghost writer. Paul Salmon’s autobiography The Big Fish is one of almost a dozen football and cricket titles Ken ghosted, alongside books written on behalf of Jason Dunstall, Dermott Brereton, Tony Lockett, Tony Liberatore, Johnny Platten, Robert DiPierdomenico and cricketers Max Walker, Terry Jenner and Brad Hodge.

Living the Dream is packed full of funny and lively anecdotes, from the 1960s to today, featuring Ken’s heroes and mates, stellar moments, behind-the-scenes stories and classic interviews - with people like Don Bradman, Steve Waugh and Warnie through to Brereton, Ablett and Lockett. It includes some 50 photos from Ken's personal collection, a Glossary of classic nicknames and who they belong to, Toasts and Roasts, and an Index that reads like the Who’s Who of Australian sporting royalty.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born the year the MCG was illegally watered (1955), Ken Piesse is Australian sports’ master storyteller. Ken has played almost 900 games of cricket and another 100 or so of footy, from Bath and Rotorua to the Gabba, the MCG and the Adelaide Oval. In 46 fun-filled years, he and his wife Susan have toured to the UK (seven times), South Africa and Zimbabwe, the West Indies and New Zealand. They also found time to have and raise a son and four daughters! 

Ken was President of the Australian Cricket Society from 2006 to 2022. As well as continuing to write and publish, he now works on cruise ships, telling cricket and football stories, tall and true, to sporting fans while sailing the seas. 

His new memoir Living the Dream (book #89) draws on this lifetime in sport. It tells the story of a sports-mad kid, not good enough to play at the very highest levels but who still achieved above and beyond through his passion, enthusiasm, hard work, and the people he met along the way.