Author, journalist, storyteller
HELLO!
Shannon Molloy is a critically acclaimed, best-selling author and an award-winning journalist. He has worked in some of the country's biggest newsrooms, covering everything from breaking news and politics to entertainment and property.
His debut memoir Fourteen was longlisted for an ABIA Award, one of Booktopia's Best of 2020 titles, an Audible Top 20 audiobook, and one of Good Reading's Best of 2020 picks. It was turned into a sell-out hit stage production and is now being adapted for the screen.
His second book You Made Me This Way has been declared a "genre-defying feat of storytelling".
He lives in Sydney with his husband Rob, their daughter Ava, Ella the cat, and Bard the dog.
YOU MADE ME THIS WAY
February 1, 2023
A harrowing and heartbreaking yet ultimately hopeful book about one of our society's deepest shames, from Shannon Molloy, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Fourteen.
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Part memoir, part investigation into the taboo topic of male child sexual abuse, You Made Me This Way is a very personal book, driven by Shannon's revealing his own experience of having been molested as a young boy, and his grappling to understand how this has shaped him.
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The majority of men sexually abused as children never speak about their past and hide their shame and trauma away, forever carrying an enormous burden on their own, often with terrible consequences. Drawing on Shannon's experiences, and the hard-won insights of other survivors, as well as experts, researchers, and therapists, this book is a vitally important step in encouraging conversations about what we must do to better support these men and the systemic changes needed in order to better protect children in the future.
FOURTEEN
April 1, 2020
Fourteen is this generation’s Holding the Man – a moving coming-of-age memoir about a young man’s search for identity and acceptance in the most unforgiving and hostile of places: high school. This is a story about my fourteenth year of life as a gay kid at an all-boys rugby-mad Catholic school in regional Queensland. It was a year in which I started to discover who I was, and deeply hated what was revealed. It was a year in which I had my first crush and first devastating heartbreak. It was a year of torment, bullying and betrayal – not just at the hands of my peers, but by adults who were meant to protect me.
And it was a year that almost ended tragically.
I found solace in writing and my budding journalism; in a close-knit group of friends, all growing up too quickly together; and in the fierce protection of family and a mother’s unconditional love. These were moments of light and hilarity that kept me going.
As much as Fourteen is a chronicle of the enormous struggle and adversity I endured, and the shocking consequences of it all, it’s also a tale of survival.
Because I did survive.
JOURNALISM
Some of the stuff I've gotten up to in my day job over the years.