In 2002, Chrystopher J. Spicer became an Australian who was first when his acclaimed biography Clark Gable was published in the United States by McFarland to mark the centenary of Gable's birth. Empire film magazine observed that the biography had a 'meticulously researched and respectful approach'.Spicer has been writing about Australian and American film and history for many years. He was a contributing editor of the former monthly Australian arts magazine The Melburnian, and has written for a number of magazines and newspapers in Australia and the U.S. He was also a major contributor to the Encyclopedia of Melbourne (Cambridge University Press, 2004), the first encyclopedia of an Australian city to be compiled in this country.Spicer teaches writing at James Cook University in Queensland.