What would make a great Australian sporting novel? Our guests discuss translating the love of the game, footy nicknames, and intense team culture in ex-AFL player Brandon Jack’s Pissants.

And making sport of the Melbourne literary scene, Dominic Amarena’s debut novel I Want Everything is a clever, celebratory satire. 

Kate and Cassie also review the 2025 International Booker Prize winner Heart Lamp, a collection of short stories from southern India. 

Meanwhile, back home, The Miles Franklin shortlist has been announced.

Miles Franklin Literary Award Shortlist:

• Brian Castro, Chinese Postman 
• Michelle de Kretser, Theory & Practice
• Winnie Dunn, Dirt Poor Islanders
• Julie Janson, Compassion
• Siang Lu, Ghost Cities
• Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13

BOOKS

• Banu Mushtaq, Heart Lamp: selected stories (translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhashti), Scribe 
• Brandon Jack, Pissants, Summit Books Australia  
• Dominic Amarena, I Want Everything, Summit Books Australia  

GUESTS 

James Button, writer, editor and journalist, whose books include Comeback: The Fall and Rise of Geelong, and Speechless: A Year in my Father's Business, about his time working as a speechwriter for Kevin Rudd and what that taught him about his own father's life, John Button, Minister for Industry in the Hawke and Keating Governments. 

Beejay Silcox, writer, literary critic, and regular interviewer at writers’ festivals. 

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OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• James Button, Comeback: The Fall and Rise of Geelong
• James Button, Speechless: A Year in my Father’s Business
• Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot
• Brandon Jack, 28
• Leigh Matthews, Accept the Challenge
• Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
• Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
• Helen Garner, The Season
• David Williamson, The Club
• Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters
• Halldór Laxness, Independent People
• George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Middlemarch
• R. F. Kuang, Yellowface
• R. F. Kuang, Katabasis
• Lucas Schaefer, The Slip
• David Remnick, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero

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CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans & Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans & Salome Lines-Morison
• Sound Engineer, Roi Huberman & Dylan Prins
• Executive Producer, Rhiannon Brown