Melissa Fagan

I am writer, editor, and teacher currently living on the unceded lands of the Coodjingburra and Minjungbal people of the Bundjalung Nation (northern NSW, Australia).

My book What Will Be Worn: A McWhirters story was published by Transit Lounge in September 2018. What Will Be Worn charted five generations of women in my mother’s family, centred around the Brisbane department store McWhirters, which was started by my great-great grandfather in 1898. Told via a contemporary frame, the stories are woven together using motifs of fashion, clothing and identity, focusing on the patterns that repeat across generations. In 2018, I was interviewed by Sarah Kanowksi for ABC Conversations, and the book was longlisted for the Mark and Evette Moran nib Literary Award in 2019.

My award-winning fiction and nonfiction has been published in Overland, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin, QWeekend, Island and others. I teach and lecture in creative writing courses at a number of universities, and lead workshops in memoir and creative nonfiction for teenagers and adults. I am an experienced presenter and chair, having conducted Q & As with writers including Min Jin Lee, Hannah Kent and Rosalie Ham.

In 2024, I was awarded a doctorate within the Aberdeen-Curtin Alliance program. Comprising a series of creative nonfiction essays, my research explored the ways in which people and places are connected, and disconnected, by our shared use of the world’s oceans and seas. My creative practice involved a metaphorical and literal immersion in intertidal zones through surfing and wild swimming. Read more about it here.