In April this year, Michael Gordon was the first journalist to gain unrestricted access to the refugee detention center on Nauru. There he interviewed more than half of the 54 asylum seekers then on the island. His article, based on these interviews, for +ó--The Good Weekend+ó-- magazine drew an enormous response from readers. +ó--Freeing Ali+ó-- expands beyond that article to tell the story of Ali Mullaie, an Afghan asylum seeker, since granted refugee status in Australia, who spent three and half years detained on Nauru. Ali gained widespread attention for teaching computer skills to Nauruan school children. Michael Gordon backgrounds his profile of Ali and his fellow detainees with a discussion of the impact of the detention center and the 'Pacific Solution' on the people of Nauru and their country, a country that recently had a change of government and suffers from an economy in ongoing decline. +ó--Freeing Ali+ó-- also includes Michael Gordon's photographs of detainees and the Nauruan landscape.

Michael Gordon is the national editor of the Age newspaper in Melbourne. A former political editor of the Australian and New York correspondent for the Melbourne Herald, he has also worked as sports editor and chief of staff at the Age and as deputy editor of the Sunday Age. He is a graduate in commerce at Melbourne University. His biography of Paul Keating, A Question of Leadership, was published in 1993 and updated in 1996 as A True Believer.