Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai chats with Readings events manager Chris Gordon about her novel, The Mountains Sing. This conversation was recorded online during the Covid-19 crisis.

Nguyen Phan Que Mai on The Mountains Sing

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An instalment of The Comics Question, a series where Bernard Caleo and I discuss comics, graphic novels, and all manner of illustrated books, zines, and other associated productions. 

In this episode, Bernard Caleo was joined by Readings bookseller Nick Curnow to give a round-up of some of the most intriguing, beautiful, and thought-provoking comics and graphic novels from 2023. This is part two of two, so do check out the first instalment of this particular conversation.

The Comics Question: Notable Books of 2023 Part Two

In this episode, a conversation with journalist and author Marina Kamenev, author of Kin: Family in the 21st Century. 

While the nuclear family still exists, many more types of kinship surround us. Kin is an investigation into what influences us to have children and the new ways that have made parenthood possible. It delves into the experiences of couples without children, single parents by choice and rainbow families, and investigates the impacts of adoption, sperm donation, IVF and surrogacy, and the potential for a future of designer babies. Assisted reproductive technology has developed quickly, and the ways in which we think and speak about its implications — both legally and ethically — need to catch up. 

This book is an incisive and powerful look at how families are created today, and how they might be created in the future.

Marina Kamenev in conversation

In this episode, a conversation with Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital. This is life on our planet as you’ve never seen it before: in this spellbinding and uplifting novel six astronauts rotate in the International Space Station. They are there to do vital work, but slowly they begin to wonder: what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity? 

Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents, and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. 

Samantha Harvey’s previous books include The Wilderness, All is Song, Dear Thief and The Western Wind and a work of non-fiction, The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping. Her work has been longlisted for the Booker Prize, and shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award, the Women's Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award.

Samantha Harvey in conversation

In this episode, a conversation with Mykaela Saunders, author of a new collection of short stories, ‘Always Will Be’. 

Saunders is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer, teacher and researcher, and the editor of This All Come Back Now, the Aurealis Award-winning anthology of First Nations speculative fiction.  

Saunders has been awarded numerous prizes for their writing, including the 2022 David Unaipon Award, and this most recent work draws from stories written from the past couple of years into a collection that poses the question: what might country, community and culture look like in the Tweed Valley if Gooris reasserted their sovereignty?

Mykaela Saunders in conversation

An instalment of The Comics Question, a series where Bernard Caleo and I discuss comics, graphic novels, and all manner of illustrated books, zines, and other associated productions. 

In this episode, Bernard Caleo was joined by Readings bookseller Nick Curnow to give a round-up of some of the most intriguing, beautiful, and thought-provoking comics and graphic novels from 2023. 

This is part one of two, so do subscribe to be notified when the second instalment of this particular conversation is made available.

Nguyen Phan Que Mai on The Mountains Sing

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