Paperback Group Salon!

Join us on Thursday 9th April for our first group salon of the year!

The salon will feature readings from six local authors: Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle, Fiona Kelly McGregor, Liv Moriarty, John Morrissey, Helena Pantsis and Anna Poletti

This salon will be held at Coates Community Arts space on Collins St. We will be letting people in at the downstairs entrance (there are lifts or stairs available to the space) so please arrive close to the starting time, or even a little early. There will be a bar available on the night serving drinks. And, seating and standing room.

Zarah is a writer and (emerging) counsellor from New Zealand, currently based in Melbourne. She is the author of Autobiography of a Marguerite (Hue & Cry Press, 2014; Giramondo Publishing, 2026), Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life (Giramondo Publishing, 2021) and Leaves Fall Off To Create Drama (Giramondo Publishing, 2026). With David Motamed, she co-runs the reading series Bad Flâneur.

Fiona Kelly McGregor has published a range of books across fiction and non-fiction, most recently the novel Iris, nominated for numerous prizes including the Miles Franklin Award, NSW Premier’s Award, Stella Prize and ALS Gold Medal. McGregor's previous novel Indelible Ink won Age Book of the Year and was published in French translation by Actes Sud. Other books include essay collection Buried Not Dead, shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, genre-busting photoessay A Novel Idea, and the underground classic chemical palace. McGregor writes art criticism and essays for a variety of publications including Artlink, Artist Profile, Sydney Review of Books and more, and when in Sydney, lives and works on Gadigal land.

Liv Moriarty makes work about iterrelations - focusing on middle grounds and connecting threads in an attempt to understand and to be understood.

John Morrissey is a Melbourne writer of Kalkadoon descent. He was the winner of the 2020 Indigenous Writers Mentorship and runner-up for the Nakata Brophy Prize in 2018. John’s debut Firelight won an Aurealis Award and a Queensland Literary Award, and in 2024 he was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist. Bird Deity is his first novel.

Helena Pantsis (she/they) is an editor, writer and artist from Naarm, Australia, with a fond appreciation for the weird, the dark, and the experimental. She is the author of short story collection, ‘Mother Salad’. More can be found at hlnpnts.com.

For over twenty years, Anna Poletti has researched how media shapes the meaning we attach to lived experience. She has written essays for The National Gallery of Victoria, The Andy Warhol Museum, the Museum Brandhorst (Munich), and The Polity of Literature Project, and is the author and editor of several works of criticism and scholarship. Her fiction has appeared in HEAT and Women Studies Quarterly. Anna's first novel, hello, world? is published in the U.S by Semiotex(e) and by Puncher & Wattman in Australia.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher The Paperback Bookshop