Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Monday 24 September
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
Angela Meyer’s haunting debut, A Superior Spectre, follows the treacherous experiments and desires of a dying man as he becomes entangled in a surreal plot that melds historical and speculative fiction. In the post-megastorm world of Vincent Silk’s first novel, Sisters of No Mercy, a group of rebels upset the establishment in their quest for survival. And in Margaret Morgan’s The Second Cure, an inexplicable outbreak bends society in bizarre ways – revealing dilemmas at the core of what makes us who we are, and how we make sense of our predicaments.
These three new Australian novels each chart a rupture – personal, political, psychical – and an unexpected encounter with danger. Join their three authors, plus Grace Hart, reading her piece 'mad' from Voiceworks #111, for readings that plumb the unease of our era.
Readings will be our bookseller at this event.
Featuring
Stella Charls
Stella is the Wheeler Centre's Programming Coordinator.
An emerging arts manager and event producer, Stella was previously the Marketing and Events Coordinator for Readings, and the Festival Manager for the National Young Writers’ Festival, Australia’s largest gathering of young and innovative writers working in both new and traditional forms.
Drawn to both programming and operations, with a particular interest in education and support for young creatives, she has worked for Teach for Australia, Melbourne Writers Festival, Melbourne Comedy Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, Emerging Writers’ Festival and Melbourne Fringe Festival. She really likes festivals.
Stella has a BA in Philosophy, Political Science and Literature and a Diploma of Italian from the University of Melbourne, but has definitely learnt more useful things working on the floor as a both a front of house manager and a bookseller for Readings since 2012.
Angela Meyer
Angela Meyer is an award-winning Australian writer and editor. Her debut novel, A Superior Spectre, was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award, the MUD Literary Prize, an Australian Book Industry Award, the Readings Prize for New Australian Writing and a Saltire Literary Society Award (Scotland). She is also the author of a novella, Joan Smokes, which won the inaugural Mslexia Novella Award (UK), and a book of flash fiction, Captives.
Angela's second novel, Moon Sugar, will be released in October 2022. Her work has been widely published in magazines, journals and newspapers, including Island, The Big Issue, Best Australian Stories and Kill Your Darlings. She has worked in bookstores, as a book reviewer, in a whisky bar, and as a commissioning editor and publisher. She now works as a freelance editor and consultant. Angela grew up in Northern NSW and lives in Melbourne.
Vincent Silk
Vincent Silk is a Melbourne-based writer working in fiction and non-fiction. His work has been published in the UTS Writers’ Anthology, Voiceworks, Going Down Swinging, Archer and Seizure, among other places. In his non-fiction, he blends poetics and facts, and in his fiction he explores possibilities. Sisters of No Mercy is his first novel.
Margaret Morgan
After practising in criminal law, Margaret Morgan became a professional writer, screenwriter and script editor in television for many well-regarded Australian drama series (including Water Rats, A Country Practice and GP). Margaret’s short fiction has been published in Meanjin and Going Down Swinging, and her works for stage (librettos for music theatre) have been performed at major Australian arts festivals.
Margaret recently completed a bachelor’s degree in Advanced Science in Biology at Macquarie University, where she focused on plant science, genetics and parasitology. While studying, she won a prize for popular science writing in an international competition judged by Professor Richard Dawkins. The Second Cure is her debut novel.
Grace Hart
Grace is completing her honours thesis in creative writing at the University of Melbourne. She enjoys writing creative non-fiction and has been published in Voiceworks.