Hi there. I’m Laura J Carroll, a writer and visual artist living in Naarm, on unceded Wurundjeri country.

I’m a middle-aged woman, a parent, and my heritage is Celtic. My great-grandfather, the most famous person in my family, was known as the King of Collingwood; that doesn’t make me working-class royalty, but it’s pretty great just the same.

I have been a member of a union all my working life, which has included stints in retail, academia, local government, and museums. I’m interested in the history of work, and it’s a theme within in Making the Shrine.

The first years of Covid - typified for me, as for many in my city, by the surreal slog of extended lockdowns - brought me back to drawing, which I’d studied thirty years before. This time around, doing drawings is enhanced by the wonderfully midlife condition of not being inhibited that my technical skills aren’t perfect.

Making the Shrine is my first book. I loved doing it so much, and learned an enormous amount. My second book, which will be published in May 2026, is Plinth Dwellers, an album of drawings and notes about Melbourne’s statues and monuments. I’m currently working on a nonfiction graphic novel project which is a set of linked stories and essays exploring the cultural transmission and mutation of themes you could collectively call ‘Australiana’.