Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Jaclyn Moriarty discussing her new novel Gravity is the Thing

Gravity is the Thing begins with Abigail Sorensen. Abigail has been invited on an all expenses paid trip on an island off Tasmania’s coast. There she joins a group of strangers to discover ‘the secret’. All any of them know is that for most of their lives they have each received chapters of a mysterious book starting when they were fifteen.

This mysterious Guidebook is more than just a curiosity to Abigail. The first chapter arrived the day before her brother went missing and her whole life she has wondered at the connection…

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode takes us back to the Australian Classics Book Club.

This month's classic is Ruth Park's Fishing in the Styx.

Andrew is joined by Alaina Gougoulis, senior editor at Text Publishing and Tegan Bennett Daylight, author of Bombora and What Falls Away.

Ruth Park is the beloved creator of classic Australian works such as The Harp in the South, Playing Beattie Bow and the Muddle Headed Wombat series. Fishing in the Styx is a memoir of Ruth Park’s writing life. From her her arrival in Sydney and marriage to D’arcy Niland, her love and literary partner, through her extraordinary literary life Ruth Park maintained an extraordinary literary output. Fishing in the Styx is a portrait of a writer amongst writers and illustrates the hardship and extraordinary creativity it took to live the writing life in Sydney through the middle twentieth century.

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Peggy Frew discussing her latest novel Islands.

Islands is the story of a family; Helen and John, their daughters June and Anna. A family who like any other love and quarrel and are not perfect in the ways that you can only be with loved ones.

And then one night, fifteen year old Anna doesn’t return home and the family’s lives are inexorably defined by that moment forevermore.

Michaela McGuire is the Artistic Director of the Sydney Writers Festival.

In this special bonus Great Conversation, Michaela joins Andrew to discuss the launch of the 2019 Festival program and the significance of the theme Lie To Me.

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Dervla McTiernan discussing her latest thriller The Scholar.

As the Scholar begins there’s been a hit and run outside Galway University and a young woman is dead. Cormac Reilly’s partner Dr Emma Sweeney discovers the body. But calling Cormac first leads to a world of trouble as the investigation is threatened by their personal involvement. When an ID card on the body shows the victim to be a billionaire heiress, it’s quickly apparent this is more than a simple accidental death...

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Andy Muir discussing his new novel Hiding to Nothing.

Hiding to Nothing pitches the reader into the seedy world of Newcastle crime and the sweaty world of Newcastle painting during a hot summer. Lachie Munro just wants to play it straight but somehow he’s constantly being dragged into the dodgier side of life and when his father arrives after twenty years in prison it seems like a family reunion is only going to happen in the most dangerous of circumstances.

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Alison Evans discussing their collection Highway Bodies.

The end of the world seldom looks like you’d imagine it…

In regional Victoria the locals are getting bitey. When the internet goes down and a curfew is imposed things are starting to look scary. Highway Bodies is a different kind of Zombie apocalypse, taking the reader into the lives of groups of teenagers struggling to survive and define their identities while the whole word just wants to bite them!

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Maya Newell discussing a new book for children she has co-authored with Gayby Baby collaborators Charlotte Mars, as well as the documentary’s poster boy Gus Skattebol-James and illustrator Tom Jellet.

Wrestle tells the story of a boy named Gus.

Gus just loves wrestling!

Gus loves wrestling so much he wants to dress up as a wrestler for Mardis Gras.

Gus’s mums aren’t sure about this.

They think wrestlers show a particularly violent picture of masculinity and they don’t want Gus to grow up thinking he can use violence to solve problems.

But Gus just loves wrestling!

Wrestle is a beautiful story about a family working together on a problem that means so much to each of them…

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode brings back the Australian Classics Book Club for 2019.

This month's classic is The Tournament from master satirist John Clarke.

The Tournament is a novel about tennis. Except in the hands of John Clarke nothing is ever quite what it seems.

Bringing together all the great thinkers, artists and personalities of the twentieth century in Paris we are treated to a competition like no other; with Tony Chekov seeded number one in the men's round, Simone De Beauvoir in the women's round and breakout Vinnie Van Gogh surprising everyone as he reinvents the game stroke by stroke.

Featuring Text publisher Michael Heyward in conversation with Andrew Pople.

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Debra Adelaide discussing her collection Zebra.

Debra Adelaide’s Zebra is a collection of fourteen stories; from the hilarity of an intricately catered Xmas lunch to the horror of a future Australia where the Northern Territory Intervention is taken to a hideous conclusion. The titular story in the collection is a novella exploring the rule of a very different kind of Australian Prime Minister. Overseeing a period of calm and prosperity she’s unsure of herself privately but undoubtedly a public success; the stories focuses on her creation of a unique public garden for The Lodge while attempting to manage the relationships around her. Oh, and she’s also given a Zebra as a gift…