Love and its Penalties is a memoir, the story of John Bartlett who grew up in country South Australia on the Murray as a pious Catholic boy before attending boarding school in Adelaide.
As a teenager he entered a Catholic seminary in Sydney where he spent seven years training to be a Catholic priest before going overseas to work in Mindanao in the Southern Philippines for ten years.
There he was exposed to the political turmoil of the Marcos’ Martial Law years and the ongoing wars against Islamic separatists. In 1980 he left the priesthood, returned to Australia and Melbourne where he came out as gay at the height of the HIV AIDS pandemic.
He took on a variety of jobs, including kitchen hand, masseur, customer service worker and film extra before turning to professional writing and subsequently published fiction, non-fiction and poetry – twelve books in all.
At its heart this is a story of falling in love too easily and too often.
Biography/Memoir, LGBTQIA+, Religion, Spirituality, Philippines, Marcos, Human Rights, Justice
About The Author
John Bartlett is a former Catholic priest and the author of 13 books, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
He was winner of the 2020 Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize and longlisted in the 2022, 2023 and 2025 Liquid Amber Poetry Prize and in the 2023 Geelong Library Poetry Prize, the Ros Spencer Poetry Prize, the 2025 Poetica Christi Prize and the 2023 Best Australian Yarn short story competition. He was also short-listed in the 2024 Catholic University Poetry Prize.
His memoir, Love and its Penalties, has been published by Walleah Press. He has an MA in Creative and Professional Writing from Deakin University.
