The Readings Podcast

In today's episode, another instalment of the Comics Question, where Bernard Caleo discusses comics, graphic novels, and the place they inhabit within the broader books and publishing world. This week, Bernard is joined by Readings’ children's book division manager, Kim Gruschow. This month of July, Readings is both promoting in-store and offering discounts off a broadened array of Graphic Novels,...

In this episode, a conversation with novelist and poet Maria Takolander, author of The End of Romance, a new work of dystopian fiction. It is the future, and the earth has seemingly refused to cooperate with humanity, producing only thorn-bearing plants and caustic fogs in abundance. Life is hard for those who still inhabit urban communities. For those who have chosen to live ‘off-grid’ it is subs...

In this episode, a conversation with writer, social worker and counsellor Laura McPhee-Browne, author of the novel Worry Doll, a thrilling exploration of love and desire – obsessive, all-consuming, and impossible to look away from. On an ordinary day, two women meet on a train. Heloise – the older woman – lives with her boyfriend in Melbourne. Lacey – the other woman – is from Aotearoa and studies...

In this episode, a conversation with Madeleine Gray, author of Chosen Family – a queer, epic literary novel for all readers by the award-winning author of the internationally acclaimed bestseller Green Dot. Books about friendship are not often described as love stories, but this is one. Nell Argall and Eve Bowman are both brilliant, odd and friendless. Traumatised in their first year of high schoo...

In today's episode, a recording taken from the Melbourne launch of Tony Albert’s incredible new art book, Not A Souvenir, a landmark monograph that celebrates an artist, curator and cultural leader, whose work reshapes how we see Aboriginal identity, urging a more honest and hopeful vision of Australia's past and future. Tony Albert's art reclaims and reframes the imagery of Aboriginal Australia w...

In this episode, we have a conversation with Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, co-authors of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. Who on earth is Elon Musk and what is he doing? Is he a hero, a villain, or does he swing constantly between those two poles? According to the constant media gush driven by his every act and pronouncement, Musk is best understood in personal terms. This book argues differ...

In this week's episode, we're doing something a little different. As Readings celebrates Australian Fiction throughout June, we're turning to the people who spend every day talking about books: our booksellers. Australian writers have shaped our literary culture and found readers around the world, yet they can still be overlooked in international conversations about great literature. Rather than t...

In this episode, a conversation with two contributors to Griffith Review 92. Griffith Review is a quarterly literary journal, with every edition exploring a different theme, bringing together long-form critical and analytical non-fiction and creative writing from the finest emerging and established writers from Australia and overseas. In his piece ‘Encircling the flames,’ Raeden Richardson reflect...

In this episode, a conversation with Steve Toltz, Booker-shortlisted author, and the writer of a new audacious, comic lament for a world that no longer knows itself – a novel titled A Rising of the Lights. In a reeling world of fraudsters and hypnotists, sleep talkers and estranged twins, false alibis and second chances, Rusty Wilson is beset on all sides by mysteries. Why was his childhood decide...

In this episode, a conversation with writer and comedian Patrick Marlborough, author of Nock Loose. Set in the fictional coastal town of Bodkins Point, where an annual ultra-violent medieval festival has warped local history and identity for generations, it follows retired Olympian archer and former Tokusatsu stunt performer Joy as she embarks on a revenge quest through a landscape of grifters, we...

In this episode, a conversation with Y.M. Abdel-Magied, author, writer, commentator and the mind behind a new book, At Sea. Expert driller Zainab is called to take charge of a high-stakes oil rig operation. Unable to resist the opportunity, she leaves behind her pregnant sister and heads offshore for the job of her life. But there's a catch. The rig is teetering on the edge of disaster – and Zaina...

In this episode, a conversation with award-winning poet and writer Doireann Ni Ghriofa, author of a new book, Said the Dead. In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had she lived in another time, she too might have found herself held within those walls. Now, she notices a sign: FO...

In this episode, some different introduction music. This is Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne in B-flat minor, Op. 9, No. 1 (from 1832), and the reason is that today’s conversation is with Susan Tomes, a celebrated pianist, an author of Nocturnes and the Fascination of Night Music, an engrossing history of the music of twilight and sleep, from the nocturnes of John Field and Chopin to Max Richter. In an...

In this episode, a conversation with poet and novelist Lisa Gorton. Mirror Landscape: New and Selected Poems is a tribute to Gorton’s achievement, and it brings together in one volume poems published over the past twenty years, from her first collection Press Release to her most recent Mirabilia. It also includes a substantial new sequence of poems, ‘Caesars’, on the relation between art and power...

In this episode, a conversation with Yann Martel, winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize, and author of a new novel, Son of Nobody. In this new book, we meet Harlow Donne, who sacrificed his life to the study of the Classical world. When he is invited to Oxford University to work on an obscure collection of papyrus fragments it is an academic’s dream come true. He must leave behind his daughter and w...

In this episode, a conversation with journalist and human rights advocate Antoinette Lattouf, the author of a new book, Women Who Win: Celebrating Courage, Conviction and Change. In this book, Lattouf highlights and speaks with women who defied expectations and shattered cultural and legal barriers – usually while being cast aside and asked to calm down. Threaded throughout is Lattouf’s account of...

In this episode, a conversation with writer and journalist Antoun Issa, author of Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War. Beirut, Lebanon – 1974. Laila Khalil has just come of age for marriage. The eldest of five in a poor Catholic family, Laila knows that she must fulfil her family's expectations. But her heart is drawn to the handsome Nicolas, a coiffeur at a local hair salon. Dodging the...

In this episode, a conversation with Angela O’Keeffe, author of the novels The Sitter and Night Blue, and now, a new work, Phantom Days. The stories that unfold in this book are, in part, told by a book. The book is a quiet observer, both as object and as subject, as listener and teller, primarily a witness to the story of three people – mother and daughter Maggie and Isabel, and another, Lewis. B...

In this episode, a conversation with #1 New York Times bestselling author Marissa Meyer and rising star Tamara Moss, co-authors of The Escape Game, a new YA mystery-thriller filled with sabotage, betrayal, and puzzles. The two authors were joined in conversation by Readings Marketing and Events Coordinator, Lucie Dess, to discuss their writing process (an intercontinental writing process, that is)...

In this episode, a conversation with writer Ana Schnabl, author of Flood Tide. In moderate physical decline, and with an immoderate weed habit, the novelist Dunja Anko returns home to the Slovene Adriatic coast to play detective and solve the mystery of her brother’s death. The going is arduous, the people inscrutable; her old friends have had years to forget – or to convince themselves they don’t...

In this episode, a conversation with Patrick Ness, acclaimed author, screenwriter and journalist. Ness has made a return to his bestselling Chaos Walking series and the setting of New World, with Piper at the Gates of Dusk. Something has been spotted in the night sky. Something that’s bringing back dreams of Noise, dreams of terror. Brothers Ben and Max have never really gotten on, each being more...

In this episode, another instalment of the Comics Question, where Bernard Caleo is in conversation with acclaimed comics artist, Mandy Ord. Ord’s work has been featured in numerous publications, and her books have received both national and international awards and nominations. In her new book, Sassy, Ord captures an animal-related encounter every day for a year bringing whimsy and delight to the...

In this episode, a conversation with Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston, a neuroscientist and author of the book The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death. This book puts forward a bold and, at times, unsettling idea – that death may not be as inevitable as we’ve long assumed. In the book, he argues that as medicine continues to advance – from ventilators to brain implants – we’ve already b...

In this episode, another instalment of the Readings Kids Podcast, and an interview with Fiona Wood, author of The Boy and the Dog Tree, an exceptional middle-grade novel about the special bond between a dog and his boy; a heart-lifting tale of friendship, courage and belonging. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780702269226/the-boy-and-th...

In this episode, a conversation with award-winning playwright George Kemp, about his debut novel, Soft Serve. Stuck in a regional McDonald’s, as bushfires close in, three twenty-somethings and their dead friend’s mum all face a reckoning. Fern longs for Ethan, Ethan longs for Jacob, and Jacob struggles to long for anything. Meanwhile, Pat just wants her grief to ease up. Soft Serve proves that sma...