Wayne Marshall’s stories have appeared in Going Down Swinging, Kill Your Darlings, Island, Review of Australian Fiction, and other places. His story collection Shirl (then Frontier Sport) was shortlisted for the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. He is the co-founder of the Peter Carey Short Story Award, and lives in regional Victoria.

In Shirl, Marshall takes a range of what-if scenarios to their fabulist and comedic extremes. Superbly inventive and powerful, these fourteen stories skewer contemporary Australian society – particularly the crises of masculinity and national identity – in insightful and yet hilarious ways, blurring the line between fantasy and reality. This astounding collection will make you rethink what it means to be Australian.

‘Like the brilliant Ryan O’Neill, Marshall plays with the artificiality of the border of fiction and nonfiction … these are strange and funny stories that often start out close to realism but end up far from it.’ The Australian

Michael Winkler is a writer from Melbourne, and is the author, co-author and editor of numerous books. He won the Australian Book Review's Calibre Essay Prize for ‘The Great Red Whale’. His journalism, shortfiction, reviews and essays have been widely published and anthologised.

In his "exploded non-fiction" book, Grimmish, ward-winning writer Michael Winkler braids the story of the boxer Joe Grim's visit to Australia and meditations on pain with thoughts on masculinity and vulnerability, plus questionable jokes, in a haymaker of highly creative non-fiction.

JM Coetzee: “The strangest book you are likely to read this year.” ‍Robbie Arnott: “Playful, visceral and elegant. Sat down to read it, lost an afternoon.” ‍Jock Serong: “What a gem this is: funny, sad and fascinating – but more than anything else, the writing is superb. I hit the back cover at speed and nearly went clean through it.”

This event will be hosted by Stella Glorie, and is part of the Port Fairy Winter Weekends program.

This event will be hosted by Stella Glorie, and is part of the Port Fairy Winter Weekends program.