Join us for the Naarm launch of Frogsong by Melissa Manning. Melissa will be in conversation with Toni Jordan.

When loyalty becomes a burden, how do you learn to let go? Frogsong is a tender and delicate tale of love and addiction from one of Australia’s brightest literary talents and winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for her debut book.

Caro and Danny grew up side by side at the waterhole. Bound by love, loss and a promise Caro made to Danny’s mother, their lives are entwined. But as Danny spirals into addiction and self-destruction, Caro is caught between loyalty and the need to save herself.

She becomes haunted by memories, by the stories she told herself of the life they’d have, and by the waterhole that shaped them both. From southern Tasmania to Lisbon’s winding streets, she searches for escape from lost dreams, until a return home forces her to confront what it means to let go.

Frogsong is a lyrical and devastating story of love, addiction and the ghosts that shadow us.

Melissa Manning is an Australian writer. Her debut interlinked story collection, Smokehouse, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction (2022), and was shortlisted for the USQ Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection. Her short fiction and narrative non-fiction has been awarded and published in literary journals and anthologies, including Overland, Meanjin, Southerly, The Big Issue, Award Winning Australian Writing, To Carry Her Home (UK) and Best Small Fictions (USA).

Toni Jordan has worked as a molecular biologist, quality control chemist, TAB operator and door-to-door aluminium siding salesperson. She is the author of the international bestseller Addition, which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and has been adapted into a feature film, in cinemas in 2026. Her novel Nine Days was awarded Best Fiction at the 2012 Indie Awards and was named in Kirkus Reviews' top 10 Historical Novels of 2013; Our Tiny, Useless Hearts, was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award; and her two Schnabel family novels, Dinner with the Schnabels and Prettier if She Smiled More, were critically acclaimed. Toni has been published widely in newspapers and magazines. She holds a Bachelor of Science in physiology and a PhD in Creative Arts and lives in Melbourne.

Contact the host of Launch of Melissa Manning's 'Frogsong' - Naarm