Kate and Cassie on stage at the 2025 Brisbane Writers Festival with authors Eric Puchner, Toni Jordan, Patrick Holland, and Zeynab Gamieldien, discussing their most recent novels and the books and writers who inspire them. This discussion was recorded in front of a live audience, just ahead of our Top 100 Books of the Century.

It was first broadcast on Friday 17 October 2025

GUESTS

Eric Puchner, novelist, academic, and short story writer, whose books include the collections Last Day on Earth and Music Through the Floor, and the novels Model Home and (his latest) Dream State

Toni Jordan, a writer whose novels include Nine Days, Our Tiny, Useless Hearts, Prettier If She Smiles More, Dinner with the Schnabels . . . and her latest, Tenderfoot

Patrick Holland is a writer and academic, and author of eight books, including the novel The Mary Smokes Boys and — his latest — Oblivion. He lives between Hong Kong and Brisbane

Zeynab Gamieldien is a writer whose first novel, The Scope of Permissibility, won the inaugural WestWords/Ultimo Prize (for emerging writers from Western Sydney); and her second novel, Learned Behaviours, has just been published

BOOKS MENTIONED BY ERIC PUCHNER

•    James Salter, Light Years

•    Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

•    Joy Williams, works

•    Willa Cather, My Ántonia

•    Jhumpa Lahiri, A Temporary Matter

•    Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

•    Evan S. Connell, Mrs. Bridge

•    César Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

BOOKS MENTIONED BY TONI JORDAN

•    Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones

•    Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

•    Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

•    Zadie Smith, White Teeth

•    Alexis Wright, Carpentaria

•    Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

•    Richard Ford, Canada

BOOKS MENTIONED BY PATRICK HOLLAND

•    Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country

•    Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

•    Ernest Hemingway, 88 Poems

•    Leah Swann, Bearings

•    Felix Calvino, works

•    Brian Castro, works

•    Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse

•    Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; All the Pretty Horses

•    Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji

BOOKS MENTIONED BY ZEYNAB GAMIELDIEN

•    Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

•    Tara June Winch, The Yield

•    Hisham Matar, The Return; My Friends

•    Anne Enright, The Gathering

•    Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn; Long Island

•    Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

•    Sally Rooney, Intermezzo

OTHER BOOKS AND WRITERS MENTIONED

•    J.G. Ballard, works

•    Graham Greene, The Quiet American

•    David Malouf, works

•    Patrick White, works

•    Curtis Sittenfeld, Show Don't Tell

•    David Mitchell, works

CREDITS

•    Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh

•    Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett

•    Sound engineer, Steve Fieldhouse + Harvey O'Sullivan

•    Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

The Bookshelf's Kate Evans and the Book Show's Claire Nichols joined forces onstage at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival — with a panel of international writers — to talk favourite and influential books from the 21st century, in the lead up to the inaugural Top 100 Books countdown of the twenty-first century. This live broadcast happened in May 2025 — with Emirati poet Afra Atiq, English chronicler of gay lives, Alan Hollinghurst, Argentinian purveyor of all things dark and surprising, Mariana Enriquez, and New Zealand novelist with a dystopian edge, Catherine Chidgey.

This discussion was first broadcast live on Friday 23 May 2025

For more details of the final Top 100 Books of the 21st Century countdown, follow the link here

BOOKS MENTIONED in this program

ALAN HOLLINGHURST

Alice Munro, Runaway

David Szalay, All That Man Is

Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang

Bryan Washington, Lot

Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These; Foster

MARIANA ENRIQUEZ

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Dennis Cooper, The Sluts

Jorge Luis Borges, works

Horacio Castellanos Moya, Senselessness

CATHERINE CHIDGEY

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

John D'Agata and Jim Fingal, The Lifespan of a Fact

Melissa Lucashenko, Edenglassie

Anna Smaill, The Chime

OTHERS

Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

Kate Grenville, The Secret River

Sarah Winman, Still Life

Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Melissa Lucashenko, Too Much Lip

Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words

Trent Dalton, Lola in the Mirror

Robbie Arnott, Limberlost

Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonder

Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

CREDITS

•    Presenter: Kate Evans, Claire Nichols

•    Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett

•    Sound engineer: Emrys Cronin, Hamish Camilleri, Harvey O'Sullivan

•    Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Why aren't you reading more poetry? Perhaps you don't know where to begin — in which case, listen here, for a guide.

Join Kate Evans, as she is joined by acclaimed author and poet Maxine Beneba Clarke, Stella Prize-winning poet and academic Sarah Holland-Batt, much-loved broadcaster and author Daniel Browning, and best-selling author and journalist Julia Baird to discuss and read some of the poems that have shone brightest for each of them this century, as well as how the art-form has evolved.

This event was presented at the State Library of NSW in partnership with Red Room Poetry.

This event was first broadcast on 3 October 2025

POETS AND POETRY MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

•    Warsan Shire, Home

•    Adam Zagajewski, Try to Praise the Mutilated World

•    Graeme Dixon, Six Feet of Land Rights

•    Gwen Harwood, In the Park

•    Anonymous Rose, Broken World

•    Zora Howard and Joshya Bennett, Still Life with Police Sirens

•    Ali Cobby Eckermann, works

•    Simon Armitage, The Shout

•    Evelyn Araluen, decolonial poetics (avant gubba)

•    Candy Royale, works

•    Max Porter, works

CREDITS

Presenter, Kate Evans

Producer, Kate Evans, Lisa Needham

Sound engineer, Ann Marie Debettencor + Harvey O'Sullivan

Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Colm Tóibín onstage at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival with The Bookshelf's Kate Evans — on fiction, fridges, rain, hinges, melodrama, reading, and why he can't write American dialogue so every character he writes has to be Irish (except, of course, when they're Thomas Mann and family). This is a conversation that begins in his hometown of Enniscorthy, site of his novels Nora Webster, The Blackwater Lightship, Brooklyn and Long Island — and the site of his memories and overheard conversations — and moves on to his bookshelves, writing, and the story of a tongue. Really.

In the year of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, this lively and thought-provoking discussion explores her life, legacy, and literary brilliance — her novels are charming, sure, but also radical, political, witty, and entertaining.

Presented in partnership with the State Library of NSW, this event brings together Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh from The Bookshelf, with Scott Stephens from Radio National's The Minefield, and Sophie Gee, English Professor at Princeton, Vice-Chancellor's Fellow in the humanities at the University of Sydney, and co-host of the Secret Life of Books podcast, for a conversation that delves into Austen’s sharp observations on friendship, ambition, money, love, power, and equality.

This program was first broadcast on 12 September 2025

CREDITS

• Panellists: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh, Scott Stephens, Sophie Gee
• Producer: Kate Evans, Amanda Roberts
• Sound engineer: John Jacobs
• Editors: Muditha Dias, Rhiannon Brown

It's Christmas, 1962, and a baby is born . . . and left behind, in Ireland. This all takes place in the fictional town of Faha, a place created by write Niall Williams in his novels History of the Rain, This is Happiness and (his latest, and the one featuring said baby) Time of the Child.

Niall Williams spoke to The Bookshelf's Kate Evans onstage at the 2025 Adelaide Writers Week.

(A longer version of this discussion was broadcast on Friday 18 April 2025. You can listen to it here:

The Bookshelf Easter Special: Irish writer Niall Williams — ABC listen

Presenter/ Producer: Kate Evans

Sound engineer: Harvey O'Sullivan

Arts Editor: Rhiannon Brown

Whodunnit, whydunit, and where in time was all of it done — in an historical crime fiction special for our Summer Bookshelf. Kate Evans, onstage at the 2025 BAD Sydney Crime Festival, with novelists Nilima Rao (the story of an Indian police officer in Fiji in the 1910s), Michael Burge (religious communities and Jenolan caves in the 1850s), and Lainie Anderson (women policing Adelaide in the 1910s).

This discussion was recorded at the site of one of Australia's oldest lending libraries — the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts.

BOOKS

Nilima Rao, A Shipwreck in Fiji, Echo Publishing

Michael Burge, The Watchnight, Histria

Lainie Anderson, Murder on North Terrace, Hachette

GUESTS

Nilima Rao, creator of the Akal Singh series set in Fiji — whose latest, and second in the series, is A Shipwreck in Fiji

Michael Burge, journalist and novelist whose books include Tank Water and Dirt Trap — and his latest, The Watchnight

Lainie Anderson, also a journalist and novelist, and creator of the Kate Cocks series of novels set in Adelaide — the second of which is Murder on North Terrace. She has also written a PhD on the real historical figure of Kate Cocks

Presenter/ Producer: Kate Evans

Sound engineers: Timothy Jenkins, Harvey O'Sullivan

Arts Editor: Rhiannon Brown

Trent Dalton (Gravity Let Me Go, Boy Swallows Universe), Heather Rose (A Great Act of Love, Bruny) and Garry Disher (the Peninsula Crimes and Hirsch series) name some of their favourite books, and the titles may delight and surprise you. Hosted by Kate and Cassie as part of this year's Canberra Writers' Festival.

TRENT DALTON'S PICKS

• Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders
• Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole
• John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath

HEATHER ROSE'S PICKS

• Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
• Virginia Woolf, Orlando
• Peter Carey, The Fat Man in History; Illywhacker
• Haruki Murakami, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
• William Faulkner, Light in August
• John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
• Toni Morrison, Beloved
• David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
• George Eliot, Middlemarch

GARRY DISHER'S PICKS

• Russell Braddon, The Naked Island
• Nicolas Monsarrat, The Cruel Sea
• Raymond Carver, works
• Richard Ford, works
• Evan Connell, Mrs Bridge
• Colm Toibin, Brooklyn
• Alice Munro, works
• Ron Rash, works
• Cormac McCarthy, Child of God
• Helen Garner, The Children's Bach
• Kingsley Amis, works
• Claire Keegan, works
• John Sandford, works
• Michael Connelly, works
• Ian Rankin, works

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Stephen King, The Life of Chuck
• Hannah Kent, Devotion
• James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Dorothy Dunnett, Lymond Chronicles
• Richard Stark, Parker series
• Donald E. Westlake, Dortmunder series
• Lloyd Jones, Mr Pip

The best books of 2025 as selected by Cassie McCullagh, Kate Evans and a panel of bookish guests - Jason Steger, Jon Page and Robert Goodman. Keep scrolling for a full list...

GUESTS 

• Jason Steger, arts journalist. Former book editor of the Age & SMH, and panellist on ABC TV’s Book Club 
• Jon Page, long time bookseller with Pages and Pages bookshop, former General Manager of Dymocks Sydney – and now, book-buyer for W.H. Smith 
• Robert Goodman, reviewer and literary judge specialising in genre fiction; regularly reviews for the Newtown Review of Books. His website is pilebythebed.com 

Jason Steger's Picks

On-air:

• Flesh by David Szalay
• You Must Remember This by Sean Wilson
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
• Long Island by Colm Tóibín
• My Father Bryce by Adam Courtenay
• Runt and the Diabolical Dognapping by Craig Silvey

Extras:

• My Sister and Other Lovers by Esther Freud

Jon Page's Picks

On-air:

• Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
• Unbury the Dead by Fiona Hardy
• Flashlight by Susan Choi
• I Want Everything by Dominic Amarena
• One Day Everyone Will Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

Extras:

• A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan
• The Body Next Door by Zane Lovitt
• The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
• The Rose Field [Book of Dust, Vol. 3] by Philip Pullman
• The Names by Florence Knapp

Robert Goodman's Picks

On-air:

• Salvage by Jennifer Mills
• Picks and Shovels by Cory Doctorow
• We Do Not Part by Han Kang
• Eden by Mark Brandi
• King Sorrow by Joe Hill
• Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Extras:

• The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno Garcia
• Esperance by Adam Oyebanji
• Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler
• Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico
• Lion Hearts by Dan Jones
• Rapture by Emily Maguire
• Unbury the Dead by Fiona Hardy
• The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer
• The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd Robinson
• Hotel Ukraine by Martin Cruz Smith
• The Hollow Girl by Lynn Yeowart
• The White Crow by Michael Robotham
• Stillwater by Tanya Scott
• The Reunion by Bronwyn Rivers
• The Peak by Sam Guthrie
• The Seventh Floor by David McClosky
• Casualties of Truth by Lauren Francis-Sharma

Cassie McCullagh's Picks

On-air:

• Dream State by Eric Puchner
• Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah
• The Transformations by Andrew Pippos
• Arborescence by Rhett Davis
• What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
• On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle

Extras:

• The Silver Book by Olivia Laing
• Dancing in the Lift by Mandy Sayer

Kate Evans' Picks

On-air:

• Mother Mary Come to Me by Arundhati Roy
• Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent
• Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
• The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
• The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje
• Twist by Colum McCann
• Landfall by James Bradley
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
• Fierceland by Omar Musa
• Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray

Extras:

• On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle
• We Do Not Part by Han Kang
• The Wax Child by Olga Ravn
• Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah
• What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
• Flashlight by Susan Choi
• I Want Everything by Dominic Amarena

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Craig Tilmouth and Tegan Nicholls
• Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

Superstars of the literary and musical world this week: Margaret Atwood’s new memoir; Hannah Kent’s critical readings; Stuart Coupe’s musical knowledge; Bob Dylan . . . OK, well he’s not exactly on the show, but he’s the subject of MUCH literary speculation in a buzzy new release by New Yorker Sam Sussman. Also – the voice of the wind howls, laughs and taunts its subjects, in an inventive piece of writing from Sarah Hall.

BOOKS 

• Sam Sussman, Boy from the North Country, Grove Press 
• Sarah Hall, Helm, Faber 
• Margaret Atwood, Books of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, Chatto & Windus 

GUESTS 

• Hannah Kent, novelist and memoirist whose books include Burial Rites, The Good People, Devotion and – most recently - Always Home, Always Homesick: A Love Letter to Iceland

• Stuart Coupe, music writer and promoter whose books include Roadies: The Secret History of Australian Rock’n’ Roll; Shake Some Action: My Life In Music, (and Other Stuff); and – most recently – Saffron Incorporated: The First King Of King Of The Cross And Fifty Years Of Sex, Murder, Music And Mayhem 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman, Niko Stratis
• Harley Loco, Rayya Elias
• Happy Doll series, Jonathan Ames
• All the Way to the River, Elizabeth Gilbert
• The History of Sound, Ben Shattuck
• Linea Maja Ernst, Waist Deep (translated by Sherilyn Hellberg)
• Deborah Levy, Hot Milk
• Heart the Lover, Lily King
• Bread of Angels, Patti Smith

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Roi Hubermann and Harvey O'Sullivan
• Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown