The March CATASTROPHES promises to be another night of exquisite devastation, with readings from Bella Li and Kevin Brophy, and music from Sophia Dunn + Phil Collings. MC’d by Gerard Starling.

BELLA LI is the author of Argosy, which won the Victoria Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry and the Kenneth Slessor Prise, and Lost Lake, shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. Her writing and artwork have been published in a number of journals and anthologies, including Meanjin, Australian Book Review, Peril Magazine, Rabbit, The Kenyon Review, and The Archives of American Art Journal. She holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and is the Associate Publisher at Cordite Books.

KEVIN BROPHY is a prize-winning poet and essayist. He has lived in Brunswick for the past forty years. He is the patron of the Melbourne Poets Union and has been a managing publisher with Five Islands Press for the past nine years. He is the director of the new Five Islands Prize for a first book of poetry. In 2021 he was awarded an Order of Australia for his services to Creative Writing. His second collection of short stories, The Lion in Love, will be published by Finlay Lloyd in September this year.

GERARD STARLING is a student writer, living on Wurundjeri lands. He writes both poetry and short fiction, focusing on his locality and the cultures that exist within.

THE CDs, with Phil Collings (guitar/percussion) and Sophie Dunn (violine), play original compositions with arrangements inspired by jazz, bluegrass, rock and choro.