EP4: Drift Net Fishing
This week on Archive Fever, Clare and Yves dive down into the archival underbelly of 1930s queer, criminal Sydney, with author, performance and activist, Fiona Kelly Macgregor, whose recent novel Iris is a stunner. Why does holding the bullets from a woman’s gun – trial evidence – compel you to spend twenty years writing a book? How do you get a voice from the dead to rise up out of the grave, speaking in the urban colloquial vernacular of a bygone era? At what is all this nostalgia for a pre-digital age where it was possible to driftnet fish in the stacks? Fiona takes us on a tour through tattoos, night clubs and streets that might just be familiar to you … sort of.
Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor, published by Pan Macmillan Australia.
The life and times of Iris Webber, marginal crim of sly-grog Sydney 2011-2017 by Fiona Kelly McGregor (thesis).
