With our spectacular guest, writer and dress-wearer Lorelei Vashti. TOPICS: Hydration timeout, Dress Memory, sit at home and sigh, writing a long thing, moving to the country, volunteer firefighting, amounts of stuff, writing your name in books, Amy Espeseth’s Sufficient Grace, pinky swear to underline, George Plimpton’s Truman Capote biography, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, ghost […]

We speak to Amy Espeseth, publisher, academic, American and author. Subjects include: two swans, fat, Wisconsin, working nature, reading the last page, aphorisms, Sufficient Grace, weather changes everywhere, meteorology school, Australians and snow, Hugh Grant duality, Moneyball, Anita Heiss, life coaches, Deborah Robertson, National Young Writers Festival, Stuff White People Like, Kristy Chambers, empathy, The […]

Starring Davina Bell, editor and writer at Penguin, co-founder of harvest. Topics include the death of the British bee, ballet, tasty Anna Pavlova, dad in a dress, utilikilt, kickstart Jason in Queensland, harvest magazine, books as objects, Cluedo lit, Hungry Hungry Hippos, domain name speculation, Don Delillo’s Point Omega, Goodreads, Gerald Murnane’s A History of […]

We talk to Benjamin Law, author of Gaysia, and surprisingly things get a bit gross. We talk about ARC email funnels, schnitzel vagina rolls, the Q&A green room with Germaine Greer, teenage acting training, Marieke Hardy, writing Gaysia, accidental ladyboy bulges in Thailand, sham marriages in China, chocolate lips, Jonathan Glover, Michael Grant, portmanteau grandmas, […]

We go into the test kitchen with Alice Grundy, editor of Seizure magazine and managing editor at Giramondo. Talking points: Zs have been a problem in my life, Gerald Murnane, Fifty Shades of I Don’t Care, Potter spanks, Gillian Flynn, The Shire, big reading obstacles, vitamin YA, Helen Garner, Alexis Wright, cocoon on a plane, […]

With Melbourne Writers Festival director Steve Grimwade! We talk about passive working, perfecting the tortilla press, The New Yorker, using your kids to find your passport, political cartoons, how to stop reading something, Majok Tulba’s Beneath A Darkening Sky again, Kalinda Ashton’s The Danger Game, books that capture Melbourne, Cath Crowley’s Graffiti Moon, Karen Russel’s […]

Great craic as we talk to Chris Flynn, author of A Tiger in Eden, about quitting horrible call centre jobs, eating fingers, not missing articles in titles, loyalist Buffy: IRA Hunter, redrafting, freaks and inverse alopecia, the glory of The X-Files, Mae Lin the postal worker, Anna Funder, risky and ambitious writing, Don DeLillo, Timothy […]

Recorded live at the Emerging Writers’ Festival, we combine podcast powers with Sam Twyford-Moore from The Rereaders. Our guest is Karen Pickering. We talk podcast origins, hots tubs are soup for your genitals, The Emerging Writer anthology Karen edited, a community of anxiety sufferers, the hegemony of the left, women in theatre, ten minutes noisy […]

Our steely podcast gaze turns to Sam Cooney, editor of The Lifted Brow. Topics: Maru, Skybus, portmanteaus, Christian Marclay’s The Clock, doomsday insurance, hosting panels, morse code questions for a different Sam, the future of the Brow, Margo Lanagan’s Sea Hearts, worlds in conflict, Ryan O’Neill’s experimental short stories, identity dissonance in the digital age, […]

We’re joined by feminist writer, commentator and tweeter Clementine Ford. We talk about Golden Globe doubles, award thank yous, Junior III, Murakami recipes, Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Caitlin Moran’s How To Be a Woman, Half The Sky, Julian Fellowes, telegram questions, internet flamewars and trolls, not curing youth, green screen holidays, Veronica Roth’s Divergent, ladies in Hunger […]