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Fiona McGregor Fiona McGregor i(A35285 works by)
Born: Established: 1965 Sydney, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

Fiona McGregor has lived in Sydney most of her life. Her short stories have been awarded prizes and widely anthologised. She was voted one of the inaugural Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists in 1997. She has written articles, reviews and critiques for a variety of publications including Sydney Morning Herald, Heat, Meanjin, TLS and Real Time.

McGregor has had extensive involvement in music, performance and event production since about 1986. In her capacity as both a writer and live artist, she has spoken at festivals, symposia and conferences across Australia since about 1996. In 1999 she co-founded senVoodoo, performance collective, with visual artist AnA Wojak. senVoodoo toured Poland in 2006. Their work has been shown across Australia, in China, South America, the UK and Eastern Europe.

McGregor is the younger sister of journalist Richard McGregor and cousin of singer-songwriter Paul Kelly .

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Buried Not Dead Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2021 20874179 2021 selected work essay

'Buried Not Dead is a collection of writings on art, literature and performance, sexuality, activism and the life of the city. In these essays, written over twenty-five years, Fiona McGregor documents performance artists, writers, dancers, tattooists and DJs, some of them famous, like Marina Abramović and Mike Parr, while others, like Latai Taumoepeau, Lanny K and Kathleen Mary Fallon, are less well known. In capturing these figures and the scenes they inhabit, McGregor offers an expansive archive of art and life of a kind rarely recorded in our histories.

'Fiona McGregor’s immersion in her subject matter comes from a deep and enduring involvement in the worlds she represents. She came of age as an artist during an outpouring of performative queer culture, in a community that celebrated subversion, dissent and uninhibited partygoing, and in her writing she observes the shift from that moment towards new forms of cultural repressiveness. McGregor is a participant in her essays as well as a witness – she sees through an artist’s eyes and records what she perceives with a novelist’s insight. In excavating the lives of others, she reveals her own, and shows the possibilities that rest beneath the surface of our culture.' (Publication summary)

2022 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction
The Hot Desk : Working Hot by Mary Fallon 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , February 2019;

'You have to remember things were different back then. In 1989, when Working Hot was published, homosexual acts in NSW had been decriminalised for only five years; in Tasmania they would remain illegal for another eighteen. Teachers, public servants, most particularly employees of the Catholic Church, were often sacked if their homosexuality was disclosed. The films In the Realm of the Senses and John Waters’ uncut Pink Flamingos were banned.' (Introduction)

2019 winner The Woollahra Digital Literary Award Non-fiction
y separately published work icon Indelible Ink Carlton North : Scribe , 2010 Z1679611 2010 single work novel (taught in 4 units)

'Marie King is a 59-year-old divorcée from Sydney's affluent north shore. Having devoted her rather conventional life to looking after her husband and three children - who have now all departed the family home - she is experiencing something of an identity crisis, especially as she must now sell the family home and thus lose her beloved garden. On a folly she gets a tattoo.

'Marie forges a friendship with her tattoo artist, Rhys, who introduces her to an alternative side of Sydney. Through their burgeoning connection, Marie's two worlds collide causing great friction within Marie's family and with her circle of rich friends.' (From the publisher's website.)

2011 winner The Age Book of the Year Award Book of the Year
2011 winner The Age Book of the Year Award Fiction Prize
2010 shortlisted Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Fiction
2011 shortlisted Barbara Jefferis Award
2011 shortlisted Indie Awards Fiction
Last amended 20 Jan 2020 12:26:43
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