Australian Shorts

Episode 11 of Australian Shorts features Laura Jean McKay. Laura was the 2025 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow to Cork, Ireland and is the author of two short story collections, Holiday in Cambodia and Gunflower . Her novel The Animals in That Country won the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award, The Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and c...

Episode 10 of Australian Shorts features Melanie Cheng. Melanie is a writer and general practitioner based in Naarm, Melbourne. Her debut short story collection, Australia Day, won the 2018 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction and her novel, Room for a Stranger, was longlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Award. Her latest novel, The Burrow, has been translated and published internat...

Episode 9 of Australian Shorts features Alex Cothren. Alex is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Flinders University. He is a winner of the Carmel Bird, William van Dyke, Griffith Review Emerging Voices and Peter Carey Awards for short fiction. His satirical story collection, Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere , was published in 2025 by Pink Shorts Press. Alex lives and works on the traditional la...

Episode 8 of Australian Shorts features Cate Kennedy. Cate writes across genres and is widely published but perhaps best known as a short story author. Her two collections, Dark Roots and Like a House on Fire have been used as teaching texts on the Victorian Secondary School syllabus for several years and she works as a fiction advisor at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing...

Episode 7 of Australian Shorts features Jane Rawson. Jane is the author of six books, most recently the essay collection Human/Nature: On life in a wild world (New South 2025) and the speculative historical fiction novel A History of Dreams (Brio 2022) which was longlisted for the Tasmanian Literary Awards. Her essays and short stories have been published widely. Jane is the Editorial Manager of I...

Episode 6 of Australian Shorts features Kate Ryan. Kate is an award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction, manuscript assessor, writing mentor and writing teacher. Her work has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies and her debut novel The Golden Book was published in 2021. Her latest novel HOUSE explores the intersection between families, architecture and emotion.  In this epis...

Episode 05 of Australian Shorts features Anne Casey-Hardy. Anne began writing after a long career as a librarian and advocate for families of premature babies. In 2018, she won the Peter Carey Short Story Award for her story, Being the Mother . Since then, her short stories and poetry have been published in Meanjin, Island, Overland, Westerly, Kill Your Darlings and several anthologies. Anne’s sho...

Episode 4 of Australian Shorts features Laura Elvery. Laura is the author of two short story collections: Trick of the Light and Ordinary Matter . She is a past winner of the Josephine Ulrick Prize for Literature, the Margaret River Short Story Competition, the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize and the Fair Australia Prize for Fiction. Ordinary Matter won the 2021 USQ Steele Rudd Award for a Short S...

Episode 3 of Australian Shorts features Laurie Steed. Laurie’s short fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in Best Australian Stories, Award Winning Australian Writing, The Age, Meanjin, Overland, Westerly, Island and elsewhere.  Laurie edited the short story anthology Shibboleth and Other Stories , published in 2016. His debut novel You Belong Here was published in 2018 and shor...

Episode 2 of Australian Shorts features Mirandi Riwoe. Mirandi’s short stories have appeared in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Review of Australian Fiction, Griffith Review and Best Summer Stories . Her collection of short stories and novellas, titled The Burnished Sun won the 2022 UQP Quentin Bryce Award. On selecting The Burnished Sun , Dame Quentin Bryce says: What a remarkable and skilful w...

Welcome to Episode 1 of Australian Shorts . This podcast series begins with Amanda O’Callaghan. Amanda has written and published many short stories and her fiction has been awarded and shortlisted in numerous contests in Australia, Ireland, and the UK. Her story collection, This Taste for Silence (UQP), was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and longlisted for the Edge H...