Booksmart

Sara M Saleh is a writer, poet, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Egyptian migrants.  Her poetry is not only an inherently political act, but a deeply personal one. We could not think of a better person to join Hannah for the final episode of Booksmart of 2023. With her first full-length poetry collection The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal el-Banat, Sara introduces u...

In the (highly) unlikely chance that Hannah Ferguson isn't on your radar, then we want to change that ASAP. Hannah  is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cheek Media Co, an independent Australian news commentary platform providing informed, progressive opinions on subjects that sit at the intersection of feminist, social and political issues. Cheek aims to make difficult topics accessible and entertai...

This week, Alicia Vrajlal from Missing Perspectives sits down with journalist Elfy Scott to discuss Elfy's book The One Thing We’ve Never Spoken About. Elfy grew up in a household where her mother’s schizophrenia was rarely, if ever, spoken about. They navigated this silence outside the family home too; for many years, this complex mental health condition was treated as an open secret. Over t...

We know we say this about every episode of Booksmart...but this is a really special episode. This week, social worker and former Wayside Aboriginal Cultural Centre Manager Cassandra Ashcroft interviews Amani Haydar about her incredible book, The Mother Wound.   Amani Haydar suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Five month...

Welcome to a very special episode of Booksmart! This week, we invited athlete and equal pay advocate Lucy Small to interview Chloe Dalton about her new book Girls Don't Play Sport . Girls Don't Play Sport is a fierce manifesto for supporting female athletes at all levels, exploring how we got to this point, and where we need to go next to embrace the untapped potential of women's sp...

For this week's Booksmart chat, Phoebe got to sit down with the brilliant Shankari Chandran to discuss her latest book Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens (that casually won the Miles Franklin Literary Award....!). Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is a moving book about family and memory, community and race, but is ultimately a love letter to storytelling and how our stories shape who we are. A note t...

Introducing our first ever episode of Booksmart : a podcast for people who see books and storytelling as the keys to unlocking the world around us. It’s a first step into the Big Stuff (social issues) that define, confuse and fascinate us. We thought it was fitting to kick off with our very own Editor-in-Chief Hannah Diviney - and unpack her new memoir I'll Let Myself In .  Hannah's memo...