Melissa Manning Library event (in conversation with Rebecca Fraser)

Join award‑winning author Melissa Manning, in conversation with local author Rebecca Fraser, as they discuss her deeply moving new novel, Frogsong.

Following her acclaimed debut collection Smokehouse, winner of the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, Manning returns with a lyrical and devastating story of love, addiction, loyalty, and the ghosts that bind us.

Frogsong traces the lives of Caro and Danny, who grew up side by side at the waterhole in southern Tasmania. Bound by love, loss and a promise Caro made to Danny’s mother, their lives become entwined. But as Danny spirals into addiction and self-destruction, Caro is caught between loyalty and the need to save herself. When Danny disappears without a trace, her search for answers carries her from Tasmania’s rugged landscape to the winding streets of Lisbon, before a final reckoning at the waterhole forces her to confront what it means to let go.

Melissa Manning is an Australian writer whose short fiction and narrative nonfiction have been widely recognised and published in Overland, Meanjin, Southerly, The Big Issue, Award Winning Australian Writing, To Carry Her Home (UK), and Best Small Fictions (USA). Her debut, Smokehouse, was praised for its strong imagery, emotional resonance, and evocative sense of place.

Books will be available for purchase courtesy of Farrells Bookshop.

Book your spot here.