The Readings Podcast

In this episode, a recording taken from the Melbourne launch of the novel Pissants, by Brandon Jack – former Sydney Swans football player. In Pissants, the embittered fringe players of an unnamed football club follow rules of their own. Fangs, Stick, Squidman and Shaggers speak in a cryptic code of inside jokes and WhatsApp exchanges, chained to each other by their place on the outskirts of the te...

In this episode, a conversation with writer Sophie Quick, author of the new book, The Confidence Woman. Christina is a single mother living in the Melbourne suburbs, but to her online clients she is the esteemed Dr Ruth Carlisle, an 'executive coach and mindset expert, specialising in high-performing individuals’. Dr Ruth gains her clients' trust through her coaching business, discovering their se...

In this episode, a special conversation with Tania Davidge, Executive Director and Chief Curator with Open House Melbourne. Across Melbourne, every building, street and public place tells a unique story. Shaped by its transformation over time and the diverse communities that live here, the city is more than its bricks and mortar - the city is about people and place. The stories of our city are emb...

In this episode, New York Times-bestselling author Amie Kaufman, in conversation with members of the Readings Teen Advisory Board. Kaufman’s book Lady’s Knight, co-authored with Meagan Spooner, takes readers on a wild ride through a sapphic romance. Gwen is tired of hiding – whether it’s her secret role as her father’s blacksmith, her attraction to girls or her desire to become a knight. Lady Isob...

In this episode, Hugh White, author of a new Quarterly Essay, in conversation with Michael Wesley about Australia’s place in the new global landscape. Are we ready for our post-American future? In an era of rising danger for all, and dramatic choices for Australia, White explores how the world is changing, and Australia should respond. Under Donald Trump, America's retreat from global leadership h...

In this episode, a conversation with writer Tyler Jenke, author of an in-depth look at the rise of enigmatic Australian rock band TISM, the unexpected success of their 1995 album, Machiavelli and the Four Seasons, and the continued trajectory of their storied career. Focusing on one of Australia's most enigmatic bands, This Is Serious Mum (better known as TISM), Jenke forms an analysis of the anon...

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 e...

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...

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.

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 wou...

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 –...

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, w...

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 new...

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 peo...

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...

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...

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-cr...

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 violenc...

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...

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...

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 fo...

In this episode, a conversation with New York Times-bestselling author Neal Shusterman. Shusterman’s newest book, All Better Now, is a young adult thriller about a world where happiness is contagious but the risks of catching it may be just as dangerous as the cure. Three teens from very different backgrounds who’ve had their lives upended in very different ways find themselves at the center of a...

In this episode, a conversation with Sara Haddad, author of the novella, The Sunbird. Haddad’s book follow’s Nabila Yasmeen, a woman in her eighties. She lives alone with over a hundred plants that she keeps in pots because she can’t bear to put them in the ground. In June of 1948, as a six-year-old girl, she was expelled with her family from their village in Palestine. Now she carries the weight...

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.

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...