Laura Jean McKay and David Stavanger

Laura Jean McKay's The Animals in That Country is a novel set amongst a pandemic sweeping the country, whose chief symptom is that people begin to understand the language of animals via poetic projections. David Stavanger's Case Notes is a poetry meets short fiction collection documenting the lived/living mental health experience and the well beyond, where dogs appear 55 times within. 

Join Laura and David as they talk down the bones of the ways animals reveal the complexities of our lives, radical empathy, familiar and unfamiliar worlds, and chasing the wild onto the page.

Tickets are just $5, or free with any book order. This event takes place on Zoom. The Zoom meeting details form part of your ticket, emailed to you after registration.

About the Authors

Laura Jean McKay is the author of the Animals in That Country (Scribe, 2020) and Holiday in Cambodia (Black Inc. 2013), shortlisted for three national book awards in Australia. Her work appears in The Guardian,  Best Australian Stories and The North American Review. Laura is a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University, with a PhD from the University of Melbourne focusing on literary animal studies. She is the ‘animal expert’ presenter on ABC Listen’s Animal Sound Safari.

David Stavanger is a poet, performer, cultural producer, editor and lapsed psychologist. His poetry collection The Special (UQP, 2014) won several awards and he is the co-editor of SOLID AIR: Collected Australian & New Zealand Spoken Word (UQP, 2019.) David's new collection is Case Notes (UWAP, 2020.) These days he lives between the stage and the page, rapidly cycling by the sea with his rescue dog Cookie.