Literati Glitterati

In this episode, Mel talk to poet Kate Middleton about how television affects her teenage and grown-up self through her new poetry Television - a poetry collection that is part criticism, part autobiography.

Writer and academic Emma Darragh also joined the podcast to discuss about her new novel Thanks for Having Me - a novel about a family consist of three generation of woman as they navigate girlhood, motherhood and selfhood.

Jess Zanoni fills in for Mel and chats to Panda Wong - a writer, poet and co-editor of Best of Australian Poems 2023 (Puncher and Wattmann), co-edited with Gig Ryan. The anthology captures the rich and diverse array of poetry across Australia from 2022-23. Also joining Jess is Caitlin Farrugia to talk about her new book Search Histories (Vagabond Press), a collecton of short stories looking at what people Google at specific times of their lives and the humour, sadness, and real portrayals of human life.

Jess fills in for Mel, and speaks to local Melbourne poet, Kiara Lindsay on her new debut poetry collection, A portrait of me running as fast as the plant is growing.

Sara M. Saleh is a writer, a poet, human rights lawyer, organiser, and the daughter of Palestinian, Egyptian, and Lebanese migrants. She joins Mel to talk about two new books she's released this year: Songs for the Dead and the Living (out now through Affirm Press), and her new poetry collection The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal el-Banat (UQP). They talk about Sara's creative process, her relationships with both herself and her characters, how place and memory are implicated in her writing, and how the role of the artist is to bear witness and to 'name the things that need to be named, and to articulate alternate visions and futurities'.

Finally, she does a reading of her poem 'The Year that Changed Everything', based on the year 1948 which is also known as the year of the Nakba. Nakba means 'catastrophe' in Arabic; and it names the year that Palestinians were dispossesed from their homelands during the establishment of the State of Israel where 750,000 people were exiled, and many killed. For Palestinian people, this catastrophe has never ended and is ongoing today.

Eighteen year old Aaron is creative, resourceful and addicted to heroin. Kicked out of home by his mum and living rough on the streets of South Melbourne, he dreams of getting straight and starting again – but the system lets him down at every turn. Debut author and winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript, Mick Cummins, swings by the studio to talk about his soulful and humane novel So Close To Home, which is informed by his experience as a social worker. 

Also on the show, poet and editor Clarisse Stevens gives us the lowdown on What You Become, a new anthology by RMIT students of Professional Writing and Editing, which poses the question: what happens when change is inevitable?

How can we live meaningful and creative lives amid the housing crisis? Max Easton dials in to chat rugby league, punk rock and backyard tape projects in his new novel Paradise Estate, which follows the trials and tribulations of a Sydney sharehouse over the course of 2022.

And Jessica Zhan Mei Yu pops by to unpack her debut novel But The Girl: a campus novel about a young Sylvia Plath scholar’s journey to main character energy.

Decorated Australian authors Charlotte Wood and Amanda Lohrey join Mel on the show this week, to discuss their new novels Stone Yard Devotional and The Conversion. It’s a happy accident that these two reads are kindred spirits, each defined by spartan, meditative prose, an interest in secular religion and what it means to hope and grieve today.

Siân Hughes, Cheshire-based poet, novelist and author of the 2023 Booker Prize longlisted Pearl, dials into the studio to discuss this lyrical and open-hearted debut. Siân shares the history of the medieval poem it’s named for, the process of writing a love song to her village and her mother, and tells us why this story needed time to breathe.

Multi-award winning Bundjalung writer Melissa Lucashenko joins Mel in the studio to talk about her latest novel Edenglassie: an epic tale that torches Queensland’s colonial myths, and asks Australians to ponder where to from here. Melissa also treats us to a reading from the book. 

Madeleine Gray also pops by to dish the dirt on her homewrecking hero Hera and the runaway success of her debut novel Green Dot, which she is currently adapting for television.

This week, we step inside the colourful, questioning and ecstatically wild mind of debut author and Melbourne-based cartoonist Sarah Firth, whose illustrated essay collection Eventually Everything Connects: Eight Essays On Uncertainty is out now through Joan Press. She swings by the studio to chat about seeking delight in the everyday, drawing in order to think, and the mating habits of tiger slugs – among other things. 

Plus, author and playwright Elise Esther Hearst dishes the dirt on her debut coming-of-age story One Day We’re All Going To Die: her character’s Saturn Returns era, why we’re all so eager to please, and how her Grandmother gives her permission to push for what she wants.