[1] Mike Ladd was born in Berkeley, California while his Australian parents were living and working in the United States, but he returned to Australia when he was one year old, and grew up in the Adelaide Hills.
In Close to Home he celebrated the intimate joys and sorrows of family life, and in Rooms and Sequences he explored power games, politics and injustice in the wider world.
In 2005 and 2006, Ladd worked with the NBC in Papua New Guinea, developing a radio serial in Tok Pidgin called "Kunai Strit".
Taking the form of a haibun (a diary written in prose and poetry) Karrawirra Parri is a social and natural history of the river as well as a collection of personal observations along the way.
In 2009, Ladd spent three months in Malaysia, at Rimbun Dahan, where he researched and wrote poems based on the traditional "Pantum" form.
In 2022, Ladd left the ABC and he and Cathy Brooks published their collaborative book of mixed media digital images and experimental essays Dream Tetras