Michael Ronald Small was born in Croydon, Surrey, and educated at Trinity School of John Whitgift and London University.

He began his career as a teacher of English at Carisbrooke Grammar School on the Isle of Wight. Three years later he became the English lektor in Kalmar, Sweden, then returned to Brighton, Sussex, to teach EFL to multinational groups.

In 1972, under the auspices of the Education Department of Victoria, he ventured to Australia and taught at Foster and Brunswick high schools. In 1974 he joined the English Department at Carey, where he served for many years, apart from a spell of sixteen months in Canada, where he gained his MA in Literature and Creative Writing.

In 1992 he was awarded the Staff Travel Scholarship to undertake an advanced poetry writer’s course at Harvard University. Subsequently, he had four pieces published in the Harvard Review and returned to his English classes rejuvenated and further skilled in nurturing young writers.

He had many short stories, poems and articles published in Australia and overseas. His books included Her Natural Life and Other Stories, 1988; Films: A Resource Book for Studying Film as Text (with Brian Keyte), 1994; Unleashed: A History of Footscray Football Club (with John Lack, Chris McConville and Damien Wright), 1996; and Urangeline: Voices of Voices of Carey 1923-1997