Martin Flanagan is a journalist and author who writes on sport, Australian culture and the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.

He is one of six children of Arch Flanagan, a survivor of the Burma Death Railway. He is descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land in the 1840s. He grew up in Tasmania, graduated in Law at the University of Tasmania, and after many years of living in Melbourne, is now based back in Tasmania.

Flanagan has written 16 books, including the novel The Call (1998), a “historical imagining” into the life of Tom Wills, the enigmatic father of Australian rules football and captain-coach of the first Aboriginal cricket team.

Tom Wills died a neglected and forgotten figure. His life is an Australian tragedy, but it bequeathed to the nation a unique and hopeful legacy. In charting the history of one mans life, the story takes us to the birth of sport in this country, and to the horrors of racial struggle which continue to this day.

In 20024, Flanagan and Bruce Myles adapted The Call into a stage play of the same name, which premiered at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre.