The Readings Podcast

In this episode, a recording taken from the launch of poet Andy Jackson’s new collection, Askew. Jackson was joined by three other poets – Tim Loveday, Angela Costi and Rachael Wenona Guy – to read selections from Askew, and to present one of their own works, too. Following his acclaimed exploration of disability and deformity in Human Looking, the poems in Andy Jackson’s new collection widen the...

In this episode, a conversation with historian and award-winning author Sally Young, who has a new book that delves into late-nineteenth century Melbourne and Australia’s most infamous political crime, The Curious Case of the Stolen Mace. In 1891, the sacred symbol of the Victorian Parliament, its ceremonial mace, was stolen. A long, heavy club topped with a crown, it was popularly thought to be...

In this episode, a recording taken from the launch of Christopher Raja’s new novel, Eye of the Needle, where Raja was joined in conversation by fellow novelist, Raeden Richardson. In 1882 a young Afghan named Kadir lands in Port Augusta. He has arrived with six camels to make his fortune, and so becomes the transport for a scientific expedition into the red centre. More than a century later a...

In this episode, a conversation with David McKay, a literary translator. McKay has produced the newly published English-language version of Dutch author Anjet Daanje’s The Song of Stork and Dromedary, a masterful, multi-award-winning book inspired by the life and work of Emily Brontë – acclaimed as the best Dutch novel published this century.In the early 1800s, in Yorkshire, Eliza May Drayden and...

In this episode, a conversation with Louise Kennedy, the prize-winning author of Trespasses, who returns with a new book, Stations, a devastating story of love and friendship, and a tender portrait of the choices we blithely make when we are young, unaware that the consequences will reverberate throughout our lives. Róisín and Red meet as teenagers in their small Irish hometown in 1982....

In this episode, a conversation with Bruce Pascoe, author of the ground-breaking book Dark Emu, and an Aboriginal farmer and writer of other works of literary fiction, poetry, essays and children’s literature. Pascoe has returned with a new work of non-fiction, The European Mind.In this book, Pascoe synthesises history, memoir and philosophy, and identifies the persistence of the colonial power...

In this episode, a conversation with Lara Pawson, author of Spent Light, a startling new hybrid book – fiction, memoir, history, essay – which grants us a perspective on the world with fresh eyes, and implores us to not look away.An unnamed woman contemplates the toaster she’s inherited from a neighbour. A homely object, hardly worthy of a sonnet or still-life. And yet, thinking of where its...

In today's episode, a conversation with Min Jin Lee, the acclaimed author of the major global bestseller Pachinko, who has returned with American Hagwon – a breathtaking contemporary epic that follows one family as they reckon with ambition and moderation, love and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty. Min Jin Lee was joined in conversation by Raeden Richardson, to discuss this new...

In this episode, a conversation with writer and reporter Michael Dulaney, author of a new nonfiction book, Sentinels. Humans have long observed animals for advanced warnings of danger – but what can they tell us about the growing threat of contagion in the age of climate change? Diseases today reveal our close ties to animals. Viruses leap from bats to camels to humans. Cats catch the flu, and...

In this episode, another instalment of the Readings Kids Podcast, with Margo McGovern, author of Our Dark Unravelling, a thrilling modern gothic tale.When Jude Sinclair is killed in a hunting accident, Lyssa and George feel like their lives have been upended. George is angry – she and Jude have unfinished business – while Lyssa is bereft, unable to accept that he’s gone.In the wake of his death,...