David Owen Kelly in-conversation with Fiona Kelly McGregor

Darlinghurst, Sydney: these are the days of strange rumours. Talk you can catch the gay plague from kissing, or from a mosquito bite. Talk of the government building a wall around ‘Darlo' to keep the plague contained. Talk of old quarantine stations around Australia being reopened, of the army being used to round up all the poofters. Bashings increase tenfold and you’re dead meat if you don’t have someone to watch your back. Kit, Ty, and Johnnie, three young gay men, just want to live the life Sydney promised when they arrived.

Host City, David Owen Kelly’s third book, is a stunningly innovative fusion of memoir and alternative history that spins an affective tale of persecution, jeopardy, and survival from the fear and paranoia that marched lockstep with HIV in the 1980s.

David Owen Kelly was born and raised in Queensland before fleeing south to escape the reign of Joh. This is Kelly's third book after Fantastic Street, and State of Origin. Shorter pieces have appeared in The Lifted Brow, Best Australian Stories, and The Monthly. He teaches memoir and lives in Newcastle with Jason.

Fiona Kelly McGregor is a multidisciplinary writer, artist and critic whose latest novel, Iris, is set in the slums of the inner-city Sydney of the 1930s and was shortlisted for numerous prizes including the Miles Franklin Award, the ALS Gold Medal, the NSW Premier’s Award and longlisted for the Stella Prize. McGregor is also the author of essays Buried not dead, a novel set in Sydney Indelible Ink, and Strange Museums, a travel memoir.