David Hall shares the extraordinary story behind his memoir Superbeast – a raw account of loss, resilience, and life at full throttle. From a life-altering accident at sixteen to global success on the wheelchair tennis circuit, David reflects on how sport gave him purpose, identity, and a way back into the world.
He also talks about why it took decades to tell this story, the wild and unforgettable experiences that shaped him, and how studying at the Australian Writers’ Centre helped him find the voice and structure to bring it all vividly to life.
What is your book about?
It's a story of triumph over tragedy. One night when I was sixteen years old I was hitchhiking to a party when I was hit by a car. I cheated death that night but spent four months in hospital with horrific injuries; it resulted in the amputation of both legs. I grew up a shy kid in a small beach town obsessed with sport, then my life was in turmoil, but through the tough transition back into society I found sport again.
Wheelchair Tennis took me to America; I met a tennis coach who became a second father. I won eight US Opens and the Gold Medal at the Sydney Paralympics with his help. I travelled the world on the wheelchair tennis tour, which was a circus that mirrored the early days of professional tennis and the larrikin ways of Newcombe, Roche and Hoad. It was thrilling victories, crushing defeats, searing rivalries, lost loves, wild tequila fuelled nights in Miami, crowd surfing at music festivals, encounters with the Yakuza and being stalked by a Panther. It was a psychotic tussle for world number one but when the circus stopped I fell off a cliff again with no dreams left to chase, but ultimately I'd be inducted into the biggest sporting Hall of Fames in the world.
Why did you decide that you wanted to write this story?
I've always enjoyed writing. When I was playing on the wheelchair tennis tour a few sporting organisations asked me to write articles for their publications about my tennis travelling adventures, that was the spark for this book. It had been 20 years since I retired from tennis but I needed that space from it to fully grasp what it had meant to me. At 49 years old back in 2019 was the time to get committed and put all these memories and crazy experiences down on paper and turn it into a book. I looked at it as now or never and got to work.
How did the course at the AWC help you?
The course was so great. It helped with learning about the structure of the story, themes, how to write dialogue, discovering your writing style.
The teacher said to me “David, you're a storyteller, that's how you should write your book. Imagine we're at the pub and you tell me a story. That's your style of writing”. That's exactly how I've written Superbeast. I wanted to put the reader with me right there in every moment throughout the book.
Courses David has taken at AWC:
- Freelance Writing Stage 1
- Life Writing (now known as Introduction to Personal Storytelling and Memoir Writing)
- Blogging for Beginners
- Pitch Your Novel: How to Attract Agents and Publishers
