Fully Lit

What does the future of First Nations storytelling look like? In this special episode of Fully Lit , writer and researcher Tess Schofield-Peters speaks with Darby Jones and Mykaela Saunders for a conversation about contemporary First Nations writing, and the future of storytelling. Darby reflects on growing up as a queer Indigenous kid in south-west Queensland, his journey from hairdressing to pub...

Has therapy come to define modern life? In this special episode of Fully Lit , Sydney Review of Books Editor James Jiang is joined by writer and scholar Christian Gelder and award-winning essayist Eda Gunaydin to probe the depths of contemporary therapeutic culture. Together, they consider how different therapeutic practices shape our ideas and language around identity, responsibility, and persona...

What does home feel like when you've spent your life searching for it? And how do stories help us make sense of identity, belonging and displacement? In this special episode of Fully Lit , recorded live at the Addi Road Writers’ Festival, members of Dorr-e Dari present an evening of storytelling, poetry and conversation exploring Afghan Australian experiences. The event opens with a powerful perso...

What do we owe to the people we love? And how do we carry each other’s stories through time? In this episode of Fully Lit , Chinese-Australian writer Isabelle Li joins acclaimed novelist Gail Jones to discuss The Northern Tomb , a sweeping and deeply humane novel about family, memory, obligation and belonging. Set in northern China and spanning decades of personal and political history, the novel...

What makes a literary reputation endure, and why do some writers disappear from view despite once standing at the centre of a nation's culture? In this episode biographer Susan Lever joins poet and critic Peter Kirkpatrick to discuss her major new biography, A.D. Hope , tracing the life of a writer whose career spanned almost the entire twentieth century. From rural Tasmania and Sydney University...

What remains after loss? How do we carry the people, places and versions of ourselves that are gone? And can art help us make sense of what endures? In this episode of Fully Lit , writer and broadcaster Sarah Runcie is joined by poet Vaughn Upward Garcia, musician Helen Franzmann, and writer and artist Judith Nangala Crispin for a wide-ranging conversation about grief, creativity and survival. Gar...

In conversation with Amy Sambrooke, Angela O’Keeffe discusses a book that asks an unusual and beguiling question: what if a book could think, feel and observe the world around it? Partly narrated by a sentient novel, Phantom Days follows a book as it moves between readers, witnessing intimate lives and uncovering secrets that its human characters cannot see. Along the way, the novel explores mothe...

In this episode of Fully Lit , we bring you a live recording from the Sydney Writers’ Festival in Parramatta. Hosted by James Jiang, editor of the Sydney Review of Books , the panel brings together Maxine Beneba Clarke, Yumna Kassab and Eda Gunaydin for a wide-ranging conversation on what makes a writer. From early reading habits and first attempts at writing, to questions of craft, the discussion...

In this episode of Fully Lit , we bring you a live recording from Melbourne with two poets in conversation, Lisa Gorton and Bella Li. Gorton reflects on nearly two decades of writing, moving between history, visual art and poetry. The discussion centres on the new sequence Caesars , where the Mona Lisa opens out into questions of looking, perception and meaning and how images continue to speak acr...

This NAIDOC Week, Fully Lit revisits some of the standout conversations in our back catalogue with First Nations writers, critics and publishers. As a podcast about Australian literature, we believe First Nations storytelling sits at the heart of what is most vital, challenging and exciting about writing on this continent. Stories have been told here for tens of thousands of years, and First Natio...

In this episode of Fully Lit , recorded live at the Addison Road Writers’ Festival, we explore the richness and diversity of contemporary Latin American literature. Writer Yumna Kassab joins Uruguayan author and translator Rosario Lázaro Igoa in conversation with literary translator Chris Andrews to discuss the writers, genres and ideas shaping Latin American literature today. Moving beyond the li...

In this episode of Fully Lit , Erin Vincent, in conversation with writer and academic Sarah Attfield, reflects on returning to a subject she once believed she had left behind in her verse novel, 14 Ways of Looking. Moving between memoir, research and constraint‑based writing, the book is a fragmentary work that reimagines how grief can be written, building a mosaic of memory around the the number...

In this episode of Fully Lit , we head to the Addi Road Writers’ Festival for a wide‑ranging conversation on masculinity, vulnerability, and the inner lives of men. Writer Luke Carman is joined by George Haddad, author of Losing Face , and debut novelist Jet Williams to explore what it means to write — and read — men today. From graffiti culture and underground urban exploration to questions of em...

Scholar, insomniac, and accidental romantasy expert Olivia Murphy joins us to talk about the wildly popular adults-only genre that blends Mills & Boon-style romance with Game of Thrones-style world-building, and explore its cultural significance. Olivia is an expert on the popular novel of the long 18th century. In this conversation she draws a direct line from the forgotten, formulaic, novels...

In this episode of Fully Lit , recorded live at Gleebooks in Sydney, we turn to one of the most formidable figures in Australian literature — Patrick White . Nobel Prize–winning, fiercely private, and allergic to sentimentality, White remains both towering and divisive. But what does it mean to read him now? Writer and translator Vrasidas Karalis joins journalist and biographer Helen Trinca for a...

In this episode of Fully Lit Live , UTS alumni Judi Morison and Verity Borthwick join writer and academic Dr Claire Corbett to discuss their debut novels at the 2025 UTS Writers’ Festival . Verity Borthwick’s Hollow Air is a psychological thriller set at a remote mining site in Far North Queensland, using isolation and an often-unseen industry to explore power, fear and uncertainty. Judi Morison’s...

In this episode of Fully Lit Live , Felicity Castagna joins writer and producer Sheila Ngoc Pham for a wide‑ranging conversation about writing, class, place, and longevity in the arts. The evening opens with poetry by Lebanese Australian multidisciplinary artist Charnel Rizk, whose work reflects on heritage, land, and survival. What follows is an expansive discussion tracing Felicity Castagna’s jo...

What does it mean to write in a language that isn’t your first — and to transform it completely? Antigone Kefala arrived in Australia from war-torn Europe and went on to reshape Australian literature with prose that was spare, luminous and unflinching. In this episode of Fully Lit Live , recorded at Gleebooks, writers, scholars and close friends reflect on her life, her exile and her modernism — a...

This episode of Fully Lit comes from our friends at the UTS Multicultural Women's Network, and features two poets, Anne Casey and Nadia Niaz, in conversation with host Elaine Laforteza. Both Anne and Nadia challenge the dominance of English in Australia by creating bold, multilingual poetry. What does embracing multilingualism sound like? How do these poets use language to disrupt, to heal, to rem...

Recorded live at the 2025 UTS Writers’ Festival, this episode of Fully Lit Live features novelists (and UTS writing alumni) Andrew Pippos and Gretchen Shirm in conversation with Delia Falconer. In The Transformations , Pippos sets a love story inside a newsroom on the brink of digital collapse. What happens to intimacy when the workplace becomes all-consuming? How do you hold onto care, or truth,...

In this episode of Fully Lit Live , we present The Critics Report , an event hosted by the Sydney Review of Books at the State Library of NSW in December 2025. Moderated by SRB deputy editor Tiffany Tsao, the conversation brings together critics, editors and scholars to assess a year that placed unprecedented pressure on Australian arts and cultural institutions — and on the artists and writers wh...

In this episode of Fully Lit Live , we bring you a panel discussion recorded at the Blue Mountains Writers Festival in November 2025. James Jiang , editor of the Sydney Review of Books , hosts Willo Drummond and Hasib Hourani for an exploration of how poems work - in the body, on the page, and in your ears. From a discussion of formative reading experiences to a shared close reading of Emma Lew’s...

Alexis Wright’s novels are often thought of as “difficult,” but this episode of Fully Lit Live challenges that label, and asks what that word is really doing. Critic Geordie Williamson is the author of the recent On Alexis Wright , part of Black Ink’s 'Writers on Writers' series. In this conversation with Ivor Indyk , Wright’s publisher and editor at Giramondo , we learn how to read Wright’s books...

In this episode, we return to Roland Barthes’ famous 1967 essay, The Death of the Author . This influential text is often taught as an anti-authoritarian gesture, shifting the power of meaning from the author to the reader. But what happens when we consider Barthes’ ideas alongside the voices of anticolonial writers who, at the same historical moment, were mobilising literature to galvanise commun...

Recorded at the UTS Writers’ Festival on Friday, 7 November 2025 , this episode of Fully Lit Live brings you Rebel Daughters , where you’ll hear acclaimed poet Anne Casey share readings from her latest collection, followed by a Q&A with award-winning poet and critic Sarah Holland-Batt , newly appointed Professor and Head of Creative Writing at UTS . Together, they explore themes of resilience,...