Australian novelist, playwright, poet, and autobiographer noted for his style and sometimes disturbing honesty.

After completing his education, Porter became a schoolmaster in 1927, teaching at various schools and, after World War II, with the Allied occupation forces in Japan. He also worked as a cook, an actor, a hotel manager, and a hospital orderly following the war. He was a librarian from 1953 to 1961, when he became a full-time writer.

His short stories first appeared in the Adelaide Advertiser in 1953 and were later published in several collections, among them Fredo Fuss Love Life (1974) and The Clairvoyant Goat (1980). Collections of his poems include The Hexagon (1956), Elijah's Ravens (1968), and In an Australian Graveyard (1974). Among his novels are A Handful of Pennies (1958), The Titled Cross (1961), and The Right Thing (1971). His successful, multivolume autobiography, which includes The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony (1963), The Paper Chase (1966), and The Extra (1975), was well received.