Fiona Kelly McGregor is a multidisciplinary writer, artist and critic based on unceded Gadigal land.
McGregor’s latest novel Iris (2022) is based on the life of petty criminal and busker Iris Webber, and set in 1932-37 in the slums of inner Sydney. Epic and picaresque, a star-crossed love story, Iris is a teeming social portrait of schemers, gamblers, goodtime girls, gangsters and sly-groggers. It’s been longlisted for the Stella Prize, the BookPeople Award, the Miles Franklin Award, the ALS Gold Medal and shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Award.
Buried not dead (2021), is an essay collection spanning almost 3 decades of McGregor’s writing on art, literature and performance, sexuality, activism and the life of the city. It was shortlisted for the VPLA.
Indelible Ink (2010), winner of the Age Book of the Year and multiple short-listee, is another great novel of the city. Set in Sydney at the end of the Howard era, during the millennium drought, Indelible Ink revolves around family, friendship, death, love, tattoos and transfiguration.
Strange Museums , a travel memoir of a performance art tour through Poland, was published to critical acclaim in 2008. Suck My Toes (1994) won a QLD literary award (Steele Rudd) and was re-issued as
Links to reviews and interviews for these titles can be found on this website in the column WORDS, as well as photo documentation of a portion of McGregor’s repertoire of performance art dating from the late 1990s to 2020, in the column ACTIONS.