Jesse Fink is a British-Australian author, best known for two biographies on the hard-rock band AC/DC and the memoir Laid Bare. His first book was a work on Australian football called 15 Days in June.
Fink began his writing career in sports journalism, working as an editor of sports and non-fiction titles for the Australian arm of book publisherHarperCollins and later as a deputy editor of Inside Sport. In 2003, he was nominated for a Walkley Award for a feature about the sports memorabilia industry. It was included in the Black Inc. anthology The Best Australian Sportswriting 2004, as was "Safari Politics", a feature on trophy hunting. Another Inside Sport feature, "Silent Witness", about mental illness among high-performance athletes, won an Australian Sports Commission Media Award.
Sportswriter
Fink left Inside Sport to work as a soccer writer for Fox Sports Australia in 2006 and wrote his first book, , the same year. It was published in 2007 by Hardie Grant Books and re-released by Xoum Publishing in a special e-book edition before the 2014 FIFA World Cup under the new title World Party. Socceroos star Tim Cahill wrote the foreword. In 2007, under the moniker , he began writing soccer columns for SBS Television’s The World Game website as well as columns for ESPN Star Sports in Singapore, Tribal Football and The Roar. In 2011 Fink departed SBS after a dispute with network anchor Les Murray over what he alleged was interference from Murray in his critical reporting of Australia’s 2022 World Cup bid and general commentary on Football Federation Australia. Fink appeared on ABC Television’s 7.30 to give his side of the story and in a number of online editorials accused then-FIFA Ethics Committee member Murray of conflict of interest in his SBS position .
Books
In 2012 Fink published his second book, Laid Bare: One Man’s Story of Sex, Love and Other Disorders, a memoir of divorce and dating. It was republished in 2017 by Xoum Publishing. His writing on relationships regularly appeared in News Limited’s Sunday Style magazine. In 2013 Fink wrote his third book, The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC a ‘critical appreciation’ of Angus Young, George Young and Malcolm Young. It was named one of Public Radio International's The World Books of the Year in 2014. The New Yorker called it "an essential read for fans of the band". Fink spent four years writing his fourth book, Bon: The Last Highway: The Untold Story of Bon Scott and AC/DC’s Back In Black , a biography of deceased AC/DC singer Bon Scott. Bon was the cover story in the December 2017 issue of Classic Rock. In the book, Fink concludes that Scott died of a heroin overdose and not the official cause: acute alcohol poisoning. He also addresses and provides new information regarding the widespread speculation that Scott actually contributed uncredited lyrics to the AC/DC album Back In Black. In 2018 an updated edition of the book was released in Australia and the United Kingdom.
