[citation needed] In 1991 McGahan won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for unpublished novels with Praise – a semi-autobiographical account of a doomed, drug and alcohol-fuelled relationship.
It became an Australian bestseller, and is often credited with launching the short-lived Grunge Lit or Dirty realism movement – terminology that McGahan himself (along with most of the writers to whom it was applied) rejected.
[4] In 1995 McGahan followed up with 1988, a prequel to Praise, partially based on time the author spent working at a lighthouse in the Northern Territory during Australia's bicentennial year.
In 2004 McGahan published one of his most successful and respected novels – The White Earth, an epic and gothic tale set in a fictionalised version of the wheat district in which he had grown up.
[5] In 2009 he wrote Wonders of a Godless World, a work entirely without dialogue or proper nouns and delving into such topics as geology, weather and immortality and madness.
In 2009, McGahan co-wrote and co-directed with Shaun Charles a stage version of The White Earth for La Boite Theatre Company in Brisbane.