Fiona McGregor

Fiona Kelly McGregor is an Australian writer, performance artist, and art critic whose third novel, Indelible Ink, won the 2011 The Age Book of the Year Award.

Fiona Kelly McGregor
Born	Sydney, New South Wales
Occupation	Writer and performance artist
Language	English
Nationality	Australian
Years active	1992 – present
Notable works	Indelible Ink (2010)
Notable awards	Steele Rudd Award (1995) The Age Book of the Year Award (2011)

Early life and education

McGregor was born in Sydney, New South Wales.^[1]

Career

McGregor has written for a variety of publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, HEAT, Sydney Review of Books, Meanjin, The Times Literary Supplement, Art Monthly, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper and RealTime. In 2020 she began publishing under her full name, Fiona Kelly McGregor.

Following the publication of her first two books in 1993 and 1994, McGregor was named one of the inaugural Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists in 1997.^[2] Since then, McGregor has won and been shortlisted for multiple awards for her short stories, novels and essays.

As a performance artist McGregor toured with You Have the Body, a meditation on unlawful detention, in 2008–09,^[3] and she screened her 4-hour video Vertigo at the MOP gallery in Sydney in February 2011.^[4] In November 2011, she presented a solo show at Artspace Visual Arts Centre, Sydney, entitled Water Series. Her fourth book, Strange Museums, is a travel memoir about a performance art tour McGregor undertook through Poland in 2006.

Awards and nominations

• 1992 winner — John Morrison VFAW short story prize — "Dirt"^[5]
• 1992 shortlisted The Australian/Vogel Literary Award (for an unpublished manuscript) — Au Pair^[5]
• 1995 winner Steele Rudd Award — Suck My Toes^[5]
• 1997 named one of the Best Young Australian Novelists by The Sydney Morning Herald^[2]
• 2003 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Christina Stead Prize for Fiction — Chemical Palace^[5]
• 2010 shortlisted Western Australian Premier's Book Awards — Fiction — Indelible Ink^[5]
• 2011 shortlisted Indie Awards — Fiction — Indelible Ink^[5]
• 2011 shortlisted Barbara Jefferis Award — Indelible Ink^[5]
• 2011 winner The Age Book of the Year Award — Fiction Prize — Indelible Ink^[5]
• 2011 winner The Age Book of the Year Award — Book of the Year — Indelible Ink^[1]
• 2019 winner Woollahra Digital Literary Award — non-fiction — The Hot Desk^[5]
• 2022 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction — Buried Not Dead^[6]
• 2022 shortlisted Woollahra Digital Literary Award — non-fiction — Acts of Avoidance^[5]
• 2023 longlisted Stella Prize — novel — Iris^[5]
• 2023 shortlisted NSW Premier's Awards — Christine Stead Award for fiction — Iris^[5]
• 2023 shortlisted ALS Gold Medal — Iris^[7]
• 2023 shortlisted Miles Franklin Award — Iris^[8]

Selected works

Novels

• Au Pair (1993)
• Chemical Palace (2002)
• Indelible Ink (2010)
• Iris (2022)

Short story collections

• Suck My Toes (1994)

Non-fiction

• Strange Museums: A Journey Through Poland (2008) (travel memoir, performance art critique)
• A Novel Idea (2019) (photoessay)
• Buried Not Dead (2021) (essay collection)