Ken Goodwin was born on 29 September 1934 and raised in Homebush, Sydney. He earned a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and a Diploma of Education from the University of Sydney. After teaching at both a high school and Wagga Wagga Teachers' College, he joined the Department of External Studies at the University of Queensland. After three years he transitioned to an internal role as a lecturer in the Department of English. Through the 1960s, he advanced rapidly, completing a Master of Arts at Sydney and a Doctor of Philosophy at Oxford, and rising through the ranks to Senior Lecturer (1967), Reader (1970) and Professor (1971). In the 1970s he became the first elected Head of the English Department at the University of Queensland. He was also made Acting Head of the Department of Religious Studies for part of this time. The 1980s saw the publication of some of his most well-known works including History of Australian literature (1986), a biography of Bruce Dawe called Adjacent worlds (1988) and The Macmillan anthology of Australian literature (1990), which he co-edited with Alan Lawson. In addition to his work on Australian literature, he published Understanding African poetry (1982) and edited the Routledge Encyclopaedia of post-colonial literatures (1994). He was actively involved in numerous editorial boards, learned societies, literary award panels, gallery trustee boards, music society committees, library foundations and academic research centres. He was the founding Chair of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and later chaired its international counterpart. In 1992 he was recruited by the University of Southern Queensland as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic). Upon retiring from full-time work he was appointed Honorary Professor of English at the University of Queensland. In 1997 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia. He died on 12 July 2014.

The objectives of ACLALS are to promote and coordinate Commonwealth Literature Studies, organize seminars and workshops, arrange lectures by writers and scholars, publish a newsletter about activities in the field of Commonwealth Literature and hold one conference triennially.