Melissa Fagan Melissa Fagan i(A151013 works by) (a.k.a. Melissa Jane Fagan)
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

Melissa Fagan is a writer and editor based in Brisbane. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Overland, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, [Untitled], and elsewhere. Her memoir What Will Be Worn (Transit Lounge, 2018) explores themes of emotional and material inheritance across five generations of women.

She completed an MPhil in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland in 2016. She later completed a PhD: her project, a collection of critical travel essays, seeks to position surfing and other forms of immersion in the intertidal zone as ways of seeing, experiencing, and bearing witness to coastal environments and cultures.

For works not individually indexed on AustLit, see Notes.

Most Referenced Works

Notes

  • In addition to works individually indexed on AustLit, Melissa Fagan has also published the following:

    • 'Reading Ferrante: A Masterclass in Storytelling'. Writing Queensland. 20 September 2016. (http://www.writingqueensland.com.au/reading-ferrante-a-masterclass-in-storytelling/)
    • 'Lost and Found in America: Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild.' Kill Your Darlings 21 (April 2015): 151–163.
    • 'Not Dead Yet.' Overland. 8 Jul. 2015. (https://overland.org.au/2015/07/not-dead-yet/)
    • 'The Business of Writing: What Do You Tell Your Students.' Overland 18 Aug. 2014. (https://overland.org.au/2014/08/the-business-of-writing-what-do-you-tell-students/).
    • 'Dreams, Ambitions, Realities: Writing for Work and Writing for Play.' The Emerging Writer: An Insider’s Guide to Your Writing Journey Volume 4. Melbourne: The Emerging Writer’s Festival. 2013.

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon What Will Be Worn What Will Be Worn : A McWhirters Story Melbourne : Transit Lounge , 2018 16915350 2018 single work autobiography

'For all who know Brisbane, McWhirters, a once celebrated department store in Fortitude Valley, is an icon. For Melissa Fagan, it is also the starting point for this remarkable exploration of her mother and grandmother’s lives, and a poignant reminder of the ways in which retail stores and fashion have connected women’s lives across decades.

Behind the dusty shop counters of an Art Deco treasure, Fagan discovers both what has been lost and continues to shine. Ultimately this tender exploration of self and family, so exquisitely written,  speaks of the ways in which life so often surprises us and of how the legacies of others can truly enrich our own relationships and lives.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
2019 longlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
The Day the World Stayed the Same 2012 single work short story
— Appears in: Overland , Summer no. 209 2012; (p. 48-53)
2012 joint runner-up The Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize for New and Emerging Writers
VIEW ALL AWARDS
Last amended 14 Oct 2024 08:46:48
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