Shortlisted, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2025, Non-Fiction

Warm and wry, mixing high culture and suburban realism, the laconic and the artful, Anything Can Happen is a memoir from one of Australia's literary trailblazers. Funny, heartbreaking, it has exactly the arc of a good story, with a theme about storytelling and lies and how truth and memory are complex. It keeps in play so many things: irony and spirituality, a slice of social history of Sydney's inner west, a farm in Victoria, a lesbian subculture, Mardi Gras, the literary pleasures of teaching writing. Juxtaposition is her gift, as is the very natural speaking voice.

With the eye of a poet, and the dry drollery of someone who has experienced it all, straight and married, gay and married, mother, friend, lover, writer, this is a raw and powerful account of a life lived fully.