About

Penguin Plays Rough is a monthly night of short fiction. Each month we programme five writers to read their short stories, novel extracts and scenes from plays or film scripts from a red velvet chair on top of a coffee table which used to be in the big front room of our flat on King St, Newtown, but since being evicted in May 2010 can now be found in a warehouse on Lackey Street in St Peters. We’ve been running since December 2008 and have programmed writers such as Craig Silvey, Tommy Murphy, Michael Sala, Luke Carman, Fiona Wright, Josephine Rowe, Vanessa Berry and comedian Nick Sun amongst many others, and generally squeeze crowds of 50 – 90 people in the room each event. We were programmed as part of the 2009 Sydney Writers’ Festival, the 2009 Imperial Panda Festival, and have helped launch magazines, zines and self published books.

Our aim is to promote imaginatively wild writers, at all stages of development, and try to programme more seasoned writers alongside those who write with energy and originality, but may be a little green around the publishing gills. All programmed writers recieve an even split of the door charge, free booze (!!), and adulation from all and sundry.

It’s an intentionally comfortable environment – with a focus on communicating interesting stories and ideas as opposed to scoring top notch publishing deals. Though that said, we are now branching out into radio, recording selected works for FBi 94.5 FM, are pulling the necessary strings to film writers read stories in various settings around Sydney, and are hoping to release an anthology of the best works to date and an iPhone application featuring videos and sounds in 2011.