Geraldine Mellet at Paperchain
Join the team at Paperchain Manuka to hear Geraldine Mellet, author of Things I Cannot Say, in conversation with Michael Brissenden.
5:30-6:30pm, Thursday 26 November
Paperchain Bookstore
34 Franklin Street Manuka, Griffith ACT
Tracey Read is well and truly trapped. A globetrotting engineer in her thirties, as adept at fixing failing projects as she is at avoiding commitment, she's now paralysed after a major accident and warehoused in an aged care facility she nicknames The Last Resort. For the first time in her life Tracey can't just get up and go - not unless she channels her former self and stages a breakout.
Forced to interact with others who live and work in the 'home', Tracey overcomes her own prejudices to find pockets of kindness and community, and with each small moment of independence she claws back, she begins to recognise herself again.
But as her analytical brain comes back online, Tracey notices something darker going on. When her suspicions are ignored by the people in charge, it's left to her to speak up, a tricky proposition given her voice disappeared on the day of the accident and no one knows if it's coming back.
Underestimated, ignored, and facing the biggest challenge of her life, can Tracey expose the wrongdoing happening behind closed doors? And if she does, will she become the engine of her own story, or put everything at risk?
Geraldine Mellet's love of story began in childhood with a hammock and a never-ending tower of books and has been the through-line in her life ever since. After a degree in French and Japanese and a sideline in Bunraku puppetry, Geraldine was spectacularly unemployable until she found her happy place in broadcast journalism. In addition to twenty-five years in radio and television at the ABC, story was also central to her work as a disability rights advocate and coordinator for both the Every Australian Counts campaign for the NDIS and The Lives We Lead social media project.
She has also co-written Whose Hand is This, the non-fiction account of how a WA nurse and her husband reinvented their lives after a severe cerebral stroke, as well as being a newspaper columnist and writer of children's TV drama. She lives, reads and writes on Whadjuk Noongar land in Perth, WA.
Michael Brissenden has published both fiction and non-fiction books. He has published four crime thrillers – The List (2017), Dead Letters (2021), Smoke (2024) and, most recently, DUST (2025). A new novel is coming in 2027. Before he filled his time writing books Michael was a political journalist and foreign correspondent with the ABC for 35 years.
This event is free but as space is limited please book to secure your place.