A conversation on between friends Helen Garner and Charlotte Wood to celebrate the release of Garner's latest volume of diaries, How to End a Story.

Live recording: Helen Garner in conversation

Hannah Kent in conversation with Mark Rubbo about her latest novel, Devotion.

Hannah Kent in conversation

In this episode, listen to a conversation between English author Max Porter and Readings Podcast Editor, Nico Callaghan. 

This recording is taken from an online event celebrating the release of Porter’s most recent novel, Shy.

Max Porter in conversation

In this episode, hear an online conversation between Zadie Smith and Esther Anatolitis (editor of Meanjin).

Smith’s new book The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity, and the mystery of 'other people.’ Set in late 19th century London, Smith uses the real-world Tichborne Trial as a storytelling spine. At the time, this trial captivated England. 

At its core, it was a trial about identity: Sir Roger Tichborne, long believed dead, arrives back in England to claim his title. The only witness called is Andrew Bogle, a former enslaved man from Jamaica. Reacting to the story is Mrs Eliza Touchet, the housekeeper and cousin of once successful novelist William Ainsworth.

Zadie Smith in conversation

In this episode, a conversation with Charlie Porter, author of Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion. 

In this book, Porter brings us face to face with six members of the Bloomsbury Group, a collective of artists and thinkers who were in the vanguard of a social and sartorial vision. As Porter carefully unpicks what they wore and how they wore it, we see how clothing can be a means of artistic, intellectual and sexual liberation, or, conversely, a tool for patriarchal control.

Charlie Porter in conversation

In this episode, a conversation with Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital. This is life on our planet as you’ve never seen it before: in this spellbinding and uplifting novel six astronauts rotate in the International Space Station. They are there to do vital work, but slowly they begin to wonder: what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity? 

Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents, and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. 

Samantha Harvey’s previous books include The Wilderness, All is Song, Dear Thief and The Western Wind and a work of non-fiction, The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping. Her work has been longlisted for the Booker Prize, and shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award, the Women's Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award.

Samantha Harvey in conversation

In this episode, something a little different, and a little bit special. 

Recorded live at the Athenaeum Library in Melbourne, author and literary columnist Jane Sullivan interviewed Mark Rubbo, legendary bookseller, past president of the Australian Booksellers Association, and founding chair of the Melbourne Writers Festival. Of course, Mark Rubbo is also chairman of Readings, formerly Managing Director.

Mark Rubbo in conversation

In this episode, a recording taken from the launch of Emma Hakansson’s Sub-Human. 

The book delves into what it means to be an animal, how our view of other animals impacts our view of other people, oppressions, and the planet, how we got here, as well as how we can move forward together. 

The event was opened with a launching speech by Georgie Purcell MP of the Animal Justice Party, followed by a reading from Emma Hakansson, and audience questions.

Emma Hakansson in conversation

In this episode, Persuasion and Prejudice: a recording, taken from this year’s Rare Books Melbourne, of a lecture from Professor Gary Cazalet on Jane Austen and Lawyering. 

Perhaps a sign of broader changes to come, technology and artificial intelligence are replacing much of the traditional work of lawyers. Thus, the role of lawyers is rapidly changing. The uniquely human skills of empathy, emotional intelligence, creativity, and self-knowledge will become more important in the practice of law. Gary Cazalet has made the development of these skills a central part of his teaching in law and literature. 

In this lecture, he explores how reading Jane Austen can help law students and practitioners be better and happier lawyers.

Readings Podcast: Law Rare Book Lecture 2024 - Persuasion and Prejudice

In this episode, we have a conversation with award-winning author, Robbie Arnott. Be it The Rain Heron, Limberlost or Flames, Arnott’s highly regarded and very successful novels have captivated readers, and his newest book, Dusk, is no different. 
In the distant Tasmanian highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there's far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they're forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.

Robbie Arnott in conversation

In this episode, a conversation with Raeden Richardson, author of The Degenerates. 

Following the interwoven lives of four characters across India, Australia and the United States, this novel takes root in Melbourne and brings its streets, shopping centres and laneways to life with astounding originality. 

In propulsive prose, The Degenerates summons the power of storytelling, disrupts conventional narratives and pays tribute to those lives often lost in the margins.

Readings Podcast Raeden Richardson

In this episode, Ryan Shelton and Josh van Cuylenburg of The Imperfects podcast detail their new project, My Imperfect Life: A Novel Journal Written by You, the Listener, the Reader, the Writer. 

On The Imperfects, with Hugh van Cuylenburg, the hosts talk to a variety of interesting people who vulnerably share their own struggles and imperfections, or expertly pass on their wisdom on the subject of imperfection, all with the aim of finding some valuable takeaways we can all apply to our own imperfect lives.

With 100 questions inspired by episodes from 2024 on The Imperfects, My Imperfect Life is an introduction to vulnerability, allowing you to unpack your own imperfect life and be more vulnerable with yourself.

My Imperfect Life with Ryan Shelton & Josh van Cuylenburg

In this episode, a conversation with Tess Woods, author of The Venice Hotel. 

When the lives of four very different women become entangled in a boutique Venice hotel, dark secrets unravel and not everyone who checked into the hotel will check out again. 

The Venice Hotel explores the powerful bonds that develop between women in times of crisis, and the healing power of female connection.

Tess Woods in conversation

In this episode, a conversation with author Melanie Cheng, a winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, and author of the book, The Burrow. 

Amy, Jin and Lucie are leading isolated lives in their partially renovated, inner city home. They are not happy, but they are also terrified of change. When they buy a pet rabbit for Lucie, and then Amy's mother, Pauline, comes to stay, the family is forced to confront long-buried secrets. Will opening their hearts to the rabbit help them to heal or only invite further tragedy? 

The Burrow tells an unforgettable story about grief and hope. With her characteristic compassion and eye for detail, Melanie Cheng reveals the lives of others – even of a small rabbit.

Melanie Cheng in conversation

In this episode, a discussion about music and why it matters in our lives. Leading the conversation is Dr. Shain Shapiro, author of the book This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City. 

To discuss live music and culture in Melbourne, pre- and post-Covid, Shapiro was joined by Helen Marcou, cofounder and owner of Bakehouse Studios, Patrick Donovan, former CEO of Music Victoria, and Kirsty Rivers, former director of Creative Australia, now with SoundStory.

Shain Shapiro in conversation

In this episode of the Readings Kids podcast, a conversation with Lisa Fuller, winner of The Readings YA Prize in 2020, and author of the new book, Washpool. 

In Fuller’s new work of middle grade fiction, the world looked as though it had been drawn in weird crayon colours ... There were no bird calls. No distant rustling of animals in the scrub. No breeze teasing the tops of the trees. Everything was still. Bella is shy and thoughtful. Her big sister, Cienna, is popular and brave. One thing they have in common is their love for Washpool, the local swimming spot. But one weekend when they dive into Washpool, Bella and Cienna surface in the strange new world of Muse.

The Readings Kids podcast: Lisa Fuller in conversation

In this episode, a conversation with academic Kate Fitz-Gibbon, and author of Our National Crisis. 

In this book, Fitz-Gibbon explains why violence against women and children is not a series of isolated incidents but a pervasive, systemic issue. The impacts of this violence on individuals, families and communities are wide-ranging and can be long-term. Addressing domestic, family and sexual violence requires a national effort across the full spectrum of prevention, early intervention, response, and recovery and healing.

Kate Fitz-Gibbon in conversation

In this episode, a conversation recorded at the launch of Shapeshifting, a wide-ranging collection of nonfiction by First Nations writers co-edited by Jeanine Leane and Ellen van Neerven. With Evelyn Araluen and contributors.

These lyric essays push the boundaries of nonfiction beyond the biographical or the academic, with pieces that experiment with form and embark on carefully crafting and re-crafting interventions that both challenge and expand existing genre structures.

Shapeshifting: First Nations Lyric Nonfiction

In this episode we have a conversation with acclaimed author, Kate Grenville, to discuss her most recent book, Unsettled. 
Grenville is no stranger to the past. Her success and fame as a writer exploded when she published The Secret River in 2005, a bestseller based on the story of her convict ancestor, an early settler on the Hawkesbury River. More than two decades on, and following the defeat of the Voice referendum, Grenville is still grappling with what it means to descend from people who were, as she puts it, “on the sharp edge of the moving blade that was colonisation”. So she decided to go on a kind of pilgrimage, back through the places her family stories happened, and put the stories and the First People back into the same frame, on the same country, to try to think about those questions. This gripping book is the result of that journey.

Kate Grenville in conversation

In this episode, a conversation with a Readings favourite, Diana Reid, author of the new novel, Signs of Damage. 

The Kelly family’s idyllic holiday in the South of France is disturbed when Cass, a thirteen-year-old girl, goes missing. She’s discovered several hours later with no visible signs of injury. Everyone present dismisses the incident as a close brush with tragedy. Sixteen years later, at a funeral for a member of the Kelly family, Cass collapses. The present and the past start to collide as buried secrets come to light and old doubts resurface. What really happened to Cass in the South of France? And what’s wrong with her now? 

A gripping tale of unravelling memories and moral ambiguities, Signs of Damage wrestles with the difference between understanding other people, and trying to explain them.

Diana Reid in conversation

In this episode, a recording taken from the launch of the anthology, Someone Like Me. In the book, edited by Clem Bastow and Jo Case, 25 Autistic gender-diverse and women writers explore their experiences – and explode stereotypes. 

This groundbreaking anthology ranges from sex, living room dance parties and the natural world to eating disorders, all-encompassing passions and religion. Autistic people of all kinds are invited to find company in these pages – and maybe even see themselves, too. 

The book was launched by ABC Radio National’s Hilary Harper and the event featured readings from several contributors.

Someone Like Me: Featuring readings from several contributors

In this episode, a recording taken from the launch of Irma Gold's novel Shift. 

Gusty and gripping, tender and deeply compassionate, Shift is a compulsively readable story about the messy process of art-making, and the mess of love and family. It is an unflinching, insightful and immersive novel that takes the reader inside the inner life of one township in South Africa, beyond the hyperbole of newspaper headlines, to offer bold, big-hearted hope. 

In the year of the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter which outlined the principles of democracy and freedom in South Africa comes a novel set in the township where it was signed. Shift asks us to examine both the world around us, and ourselves.

Irma Gold in conversation

In this episode, a recording taken from the launch of historian Lisa MacKinney’s book, Dressed in Black: The Shangri-Las and Their Recorded Legacy. MacKinney marshals an impressive array of new evidence to tell the story of the Shangri-Las, one of the most significant-and most misunderstood-pop groups of the 1960s. 

Sisters Mary and Betty Weiss, together with twins Mary Ann and Marguerite Ganser, were schoolgirls when they formed the Shangri-Las in 1963, and had a meteoric rise to fame with songs like "Leader of the Pack" and "Remember (Walking in the Sand)." Their career was cut short for reasons largely beyond their control, derailed by the machinations of Mafia-linked record executives, and heartbreak and tragedy followed. 

Equally importantly, Dressed in Black radically rewrites the accepted narrative of the Shangri-Las' place in rock history. As young women, they were permitted little agency within a male-dominated industry that viewed teenagers as fodder to be manipulat-ed and exploited by producers, songwriters, and label owners. For decades, this has served as an excuse for critics to deny the musical input of the group members, to trivialize the Shangri-Las as a "girl group," and to assign their work a lesser rank in the canon of "authentic" rock and roll. MacKinney's great achievement here is to foreground the Shangri-Las' considerable abilities and musicality, and establish the centrality of their performance of their songs to the group's underappreciated artistic achievement.

Lisa MacKinney in conversation

In today’s episode, author Hamish McDonald in conversation to discuss his book, Melanesia: Travels in Black Oceania. Stretching from Fiji in the east to New Guinea in the west, Melanesia is astonishingly diverse. Its islands are home to some 1,200 language groups, many of them still isolated from the outside world. In Australia, this complex region tends to make the news only in times of crisis – military coups in Fiji, Kanak unrest in New Caledonia, rioting in Solomon Islands. Melanesia offers readers a deeper insight into the people and places behind these headlines, combining travelogue, history and astute political analysis.

Hamish McDonald in conversation

In this episode, a conversation with Jane Caro, a commentator, writer and activist, and author of Lyrebird. 

In this new crime novel, which opens twenty years in the past, ornithology student Jessica Weston recorded a lyrebird mimicking a woman's dying screams and reported it to police, but her claims were dismissed. Now, two decades later, a body is discovered exactly where Jessica had said it would be. Retired detective Megan Blaxland, who originally believed Jessica, returns to lead the reopened investigation. She and Jessica are determined to seek justice for the long-ignored victim, whose death was witnessed only by a bird and her murderer. But as they dig deeper, they uncover dangerous truths that put their own lives at risk.

Jane Caro in conversation

In this episode, a conversation with the bestselling author of The Truth About Her, Jacqueline Maley. Maley’s new book, Lonely Mouth, is a tender and vivid novel about the conflicted way women think about their bodies, their appetites, and themselves in the world.

Jacqueline Maley in conversation

In this episode, a conversation with author Kimberley Allsopp, author of Love and Other Puzzles, and a new book, Rise and Shine. 

Charming, wryly funny, poignant and original - Rise and Shine is a love story, yes, but it's a love story that happens ten years into a marriage, when somebody wants out. It is also a story about life, love and happiness, and in the absence of happiness, what we need to do to find it again. 

Rise and Shine is an utterly surprising delight, a break-up tale that is also a love story; endearing, astringent and original.

Kimberley Allsopp in conversation

In this episode, a recording taken from the launch of acclaimed author Laura Elvery’s novel, Nightingale, inspired by the life of Florence Nightingale; part historical fiction, part ghost story, and utterly original. 

Mayfair, 1910. At the age of ninety, Florence Nightingale is frail and no longer of sound mind. After a storied career as a nurse, writer and statistician, she now leads a reclusive existence. One summer evening she is astonished to receive a visitor – a young man named Silas Bradley, who claims to have met her during the Crimean War fifty-five years ago. But how can this be? And how does the elusive Jean Frawley connect their two lives? 

In this eagerly anticipated novel, Laura Elvery shows why she is one of the most lauded writers of her generation. Nightingale is a luminous tale of faith and love, bravery and care, and the vitality of women's work.

Laura Elvery in conversation

Hear our bookseller Sean O’Beirne in conversation with author Helen Garner about her 50-year writing career.

A conversation with Helen Garner

Hear our events manager Chris Gordon in conversation with Trent Dalton about his wonderful debut novel, Boy Swallows Universe.

A conversation with Trent Dalton

The Readings Podcast is a celebration of books, reading and culture. Episodes are published weekly and include author interviews, event recordings, booksellers chatting about their favourite reads, industry insights, and more.

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