AustLit

Bill Sutton described himself a shearing shed anarchist and continued his devotion to the union movement throughout his life. After having worked as a shearer, he ran the Peoples Bookshop in Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane for many years, stocking not only union material but also poetry and music, and displayed posters for upcoming cultural events. His 1972 prosecution for selling Phillip Roth's banned book Portnoy's Complaint was the basis for his 1973 short story The Good Looking Bookseller and the Ugly Society. The bookshop had moved by this time to St Paul's Terrace but the building was structurally damaged by a bomb blast engineered by a "well known Brisbane Nazi" ( Neil Lloyd, 'Communist Party Bombing, 1972,' Radical Brisbane, ed. Raymond Evans and Carole Ferrier (2004), 259-264). He was the last fulltime paid manager of the bookshop. Sutton was the honorary secretary of the Brisbane Realist Writers Group for many years, and travelled overseas to writers conferences.