In this episode, we’re delighted to begin 2026 with an interview with one of Readings’ favourite writers, a key member of Australia’s literary community and a frequent guest (in the interviewer seat) on the Readings Podcast itself, Kate Mildenhall.

Her acclaimed books include Skylarking, The Mother Fault and The Hummingbird Effect, and joining these with publication late last year is The Hiding Place. It’s The White Lotus meets The Slap, in a razor-sharp literary thriller about deception and self-deception, and how far people will go to protect what they feel they ought to have.

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761429057/the-hiding-place--kate-mildenhall--2025--9781761429057

In this episode, a conversation with Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection, an audacious and original novel-in-stories, following a cast of intricately linked characters as rejection throws their lives and relationships into chaos.

Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the thorniest problems of modern life: sex, relationships, identity and the internet. We see a tryhard male feminist's passionate allyship turn to a furious and debilitating nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that his feminism isn't getting him laid; a young woman's unrequited crush spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of both her sense of self and her group chat; and witness a shy late bloomer's flailing efforts at a first relationship lead to a life-upending mistake.

As these characters pop up in each other's dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways that our delusions can warp our desire for connection.

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780008759384/rejection--tony-tulathimutte--2026--9780008759384

In this episode, a conversation with author Laura Bates, author of The New Age of Sexism.

AI is here, bringing a seismic shift in the way our society operates. Might this mean a future reimagined on equitable terms for women and marginalised groups everywhere? Not unless we fight for it. At present, power remains largely in the hands of a few rich, white men. New AI-driven technologies, with misogyny baked into their design, are putting women in danger, their rights and safety sacrificed at the altar of profitability and reckless speed.

In The New Age of Sexism, Sunday Times bestselling author and campaigner Laura Bates takes us deep into the heart of this rapidly evolving world. She explores the metaverse, confronts deepfake pornography, travels to cyber brothels, tests chatbots, and hears from schools in the grip of online sexual abuse, showing how our lives – from education to work, sex to entertainment – are being infiltrated by easily accessible technologies that are changing the way we live and love. What she finds is a wild west where existing forms of discrimination, inequality and harassment are being coded into the future we will all have little choice about living in – unless we seize this moment to demand change.

Gripping, courageous and eye-opening, The New Age of Sexism exposes a phenomenon we can’t afford to ignore any longer. Our future is on the line. We need to act now, before it is too late.

In this episode, a conversation with author Sarah Housley, author of the new book, Designing Hope.

When did we stop dreaming of a better future? What happened to the science fiction golden age of the 1950s, when futurism flourished as a discipline and drove innovation? As a society, we either struggle to imagine something good for the times to come, or we fail to picture any future at all. Our world is in polycrisis: we face climate breakdown, societal fracturing, governmental collapse, war, and rising inequality. The exciting outcomes we dreamed of, from the space race to wonder material plastic, have brought contingent problems of their own. We haven’t yet developed mainstream and accessible new narratives to replace these failures, and if you ask someone to imagine ‘the future’, they’ll probably still picture flying cars.

Designing Hope resets expectations. Through the lens of four emerging futures, Sarah Housley shows us visions of hope that inspire action and critical thinking about how we’ll live in the decades to come.

In this episode, a conversation with poet Ender Başkan, author of a new book, Two Hundred Million Musketeers.

In this work, Başkan explores the complexities of parenthood and family life, and anxieties about the future his children will grow up in. It maps the shifting trains of thought when one’s attention is drawn in many different directions – between child-rearing and house-keeping, domestic crises, the need to earn a living, and the responsibilities you have to the past as well as to the future, to your own parents and grandparents, as well as to your children.

This is a very special instalment of the podcast, as we have not one, not two nor three, but four interviews with four award winners – the 2025 winners of the four categories of The Reading Prize.

First presented in 2014, The Readings Prize supports new and outstanding Australian voices across three separate categories of fiction: Children’s, Young Adult and New Australian Fiction. The Readings Prize is unique in the Australian literary landscape as it’s the only prize currently run by an independent bookshop and supporting emerging Australian voices. Winners of each category are awarded $5000 and the winner of the Gab Williams Prize, which is judged by the Readings Teen Advisory Board, wins $1000.

To celebrate The Readings Prize in 2025 we have brought together short interviews with each of the winners and the respective Chair of Judges for your listening pleasure.

In this episode, a conversation with Bri Lee, the acclaimed and bestselling author of Eggshell Skull and The Work, and of a new novel, Seed.

Mitchell is a brilliant biologist, committed to the environment and the growing global antinatalist movement. For one month each year he lives with his colleague Frances in a utopia of radical equality and scientific dedication in Antarctica. They are concluding the Anarctos Project: a seed vault in an isolated, secret location. It is a biodiversity insurance policy against humanity's devastating effects on the rapidly warming planet. But when their helicopter doesn't pick them up, and strange things begin to happen, their faith in science is suddenly not enough. Mitchell has been keeping big secrets - from Frances and from himself. The ice haunts him with memories of a devastating betrayal and questions of legacy and fairness crowd his mind. If they don't get back to McMurdo Station before the last flight home they face a long dark polar winter together. Alone. As the days get shorter, these two people of firm logic and reason begin finding fault lines in their perfect social experiment.

Thrilling, original and almost unbearably suspenseful, Seed offers an uneasy glimpse into isolation, love and our worst fears.

In this episode, a conversation with Andrew Pippos, the author of Lucky’s, awarded the Readings Prize for Fiction, on his new, forthcoming book, The Transformations.

In the fading glow of Australia's print journalism era, The National is more than a newspaper: it's an institution, and the only place that George Desoulis has ever felt at home. A world-weary subeditor with a bookish sensibility and a painful past, George is one of nature's loners. But a late-night encounter with an unorthodox and self-assured reporter, Cassandra Gwan, begins to unravel both of their carefully managed worlds. As the decline of the newspaper enters a desperate stage, George and Cassandra struggle to balance their turbulent relationship with their responsibilities to family, and the compromises each has built their life upon.

With a deft wit and a sharp eye for emotional complexity, Pippos examines the stories we tell ourselves, and the ways people handle grief, guilt and generational change. The Transformations is a novel about endings – of dreams, relationships, institutions – and the chance of new beginnings.

In this episode, a recording taken from the launch of Monica Raszewski's Crimson Light Polished Wood.

Leonora, a British teacher, has relocated to Melbourne and falls in love with Margaret, a fellow female teacher who three years later dies of cancer. While still grieving for Margaret, Leonora meets and befriends Anna, the Polish woman who lives next door. As Leonora becomes increasingly involved with Anna and her family the novel illuminates with subtle ease the influence Leonora has on Anna's daughter, Lydia, introducing her to the wonderful world of literature and art.

This is a novel about the ways we all long for acceptance and the ways in which those we might feel most in touch with including parents, siblings and mentors can often have different values and views about us. As such it is a beautiful work about art, gender, disappointment, understanding and celebration.

In today’s episode, a conversation with a longtime Readings favourite, Toni Jordan, about her most recent book, Tenderfoot.

The story is set in Brisbane, 1975: Andie Tanner's world is small but whole. Her mum is complicated, but she adores her dad and the kennel of racing greyhounds that live under their house. Andie is a serious girl with plans: finish school with her friends, then apprentice to her father until she can become a greyhound trainer, with dogs of her very own.

But real life rarely goes to plan, and the world is bigger and more complicated than Andie could imagine. When she loses everything she cares about – her family, her friends, the dogs – it's up to Andie to reclaim her future. She will need all her wits to survive this new reality of secrets and half-truths, addictions and crime.