Join us on Tuesday 3 November (6:30pm) for a special event with debut author Gillian Hagenus in-conversation with Pierce Wilcox discussing Gillian's award-winning short story collection, Common Places

The Australian suburbs are stranger than they seem – sun-bleached streets haunted by memory, cul‑de‑sacs edged with bushland that watches back, and homes where dangers lurk behind familiar fences. Between neighbours who know too much, houses that hum with memories best forgotten and bushfire smoke seeping into backyards, this collection of short fiction reveals the hidden anxieties that shape our domestic lives.

Subversive, intimate and darkly imaginative, Common Places drags these quiet streets into the light, revealing a gothic noir landscape where the familiar turns unsettling – reminding us that the most terrifying things are often the ones that feel closest to home.

‘These fourteen stories are perfectly crafted and calibrated. Gillian Hagenus explores the dark humour, the underbelly and the ordinary and extraordinary of Australian suburbia in a delightfully subversive and inventive way. Using an impressive range of narrative styles and perspectives, she has delivered a collection of fiction that announces her as a serious new voice in Australian fiction.’ (QLA Judges)

Gillian Hagenus is one of the organisers of the Australian Short Story Festival and worked for three years as an editor at MidnightSun Publishing in Adelaide. She holds a Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing, and her work has been shortlisted and longlisted for a number of awards, including the Boroondara, Djillong, Nielma Sidney and Peter Carey short story awards. She is the editor of the short story anthology, Strangely Enough (2023). Common Places won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer at the 2025 Queensland Literary Awards; it is her first collection of short fiction.

Pierce Wilcox writes weird fiction, poetry, and tiny role-playing games. His writing has been published in Overland, Cordite Poetry Review, and Jacaranda Journal, and his works for the stage have been performed nationally, including at the Melbourne Festival, Sydney Festival, and the Biennale of Sydney. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, where he also teaches.

Sign up to our Books@Stones newsletter to stay up to date.

All our events are free to attend, but bookings are required as seats are limited.

Contact the host of Books@Stones event: Common Places by Gillian Hagenus