Fall for us at Dinner Party Press

Autumn is cascading around us. It's cold outside, but hot wherever Dinner Party Press is. Leaves blushing, cheeks flushing. Come inside and let us warm you with an evening of erotica read by Sophia Cai, George Criddle, Mel Deerson and Lia Dewey Morgan.

Your host for the evening will be Emily Westmoreland and Caitlin Lawless.

This event will take place on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Peoples of the Kulin Nation. We would like to acknowledge the longstanding storytelling culture of First Nations Peoples here in Naarm, so-called Australia and beyond. Sovereignty was never ceded and we would like to pay our respects to elders past and present.

Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

Sophia Cai is a curator and arts writer based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. She is the current Artistic Director of Bus Projects, one of Australia’s longest running artist-run organisations, while maintaining an independent curating and writing practice. From 2020 to 2023, she taught as a lecturer at the Victorian College of Arts, University of Melbourne and Monash Art Design & Architecture, Monash University. Her first book with Smith Street Books, titled Clayful, is due for publication in 2024.

Dr George Criddle is an artist, writer, and occasional curator with English/Australian heritage. Working mainly across sculpture, film, and performance, their most recent works engage with ideas of history, family, land use, and colonial silence. They completed a PhD in 2021 at Monash University having studied previously at Curtin University in Perth, and École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. They currently serve on the board of Kings Artist Run Gallery and teach at the Victorian College of the Arts and La Trobe University in Naarm, Melbourne.

Mel Deerson is a multidisciplinary artist whose latest book, dream of the cherry tree is a sexy, angsty take on the Medieval illuminated manuscript. They have exhibited at the TCB Gallery, Musuem of the Living West. 7UP and Kings ARI among others. Mel has recently returned from a residency in Italy.

Lia Dewey Morgan is a poet, writer and library worker living in Narrm. Morgan’s first collection, Bath Songs, was published with local small press nomorepoetry and chosen for Aniko Press’ Best of 2022 Book Recommendations. Australian Book Review’s Ender Baskan described her poems as having a ‘resonant poetics of emergence,’ and Not Very Poetic’s Tess Fletcher called them ‘carnal…visceral… fierce and tender’. Since publishing her book, Morgan has returned to a private space of study and experimentation, searching for a poetics of place and intercultural exchange.

WILLOWS & WINE is a wine bar and bookstore based in West Melbourne. https://www.blackbooksbar.com/

DINNER PARTY PRESS Smart friends. Good books. House wine. We produce literary events in unexpected places. https://www.dinnerpartypress.com/

Host or Publisher Dinner Party Press