The Readings Podcast

In this episode, a conversation with Louise Kennedy, the prize-winning author of Trespasses, who returns with a new book, Stations, a devastating story of love and friendship, and a tender portrait of the choices we blithely make when we are young, unaware that the consequences will reverberate throughout our lives.

Róisín and Red meet as teenagers in their small Irish hometown in 1982. Brilliant, sharp-tongued and born to slip through the cracks, Red's reputation for trouble precedes him – but Róisín finds herself swept up in his storm, and soon their connection deepens. When a brush with the law pushes Red into a corner, he escapes their town to start a new life in England. As the years pass, they remain tethered to one another, a fragile thread holding their once fierce friendship together.

When Róisín arrives in London, the promise of freedom, of reinvention, and of finding her dear friend calls. But searching for Red leads Róisín to a truth darker than she could have imagined: when you go looking for someone you may uncover parts of yourself along the way that you'd rather stayed buried. And Red – bright, beautiful Red – might not want to be found at all.

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781526664334/stations--louise-kennedy--2026--9781526664334

In this episode, a conversation with Bruce Pascoe, author of the ground-breaking book Dark Emu, and an Aboriginal farmer and writer of other works of literary fiction, poetry, essays and children’s literature. Pascoe has returned with a new work of non-fiction, The European Mind.

In this book, Pascoe synthesises history, memoir and philosophy, and identifies the persistence of the colonial power structures and thinking that European colonists brought to the world, and the hope for remedy that lies in remembering certain Indigenous ways of being.

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781922864673/the-european-mind--bruce-pascoe--2026--9781922864673

In this episode, a conversation with Lara Pawson, author of Spent Light, a startling new hybrid book – fiction, memoir, history, essay – which grants us a perspective on the world with fresh eyes, and implores us to not look away.

An unnamed woman contemplates the toaster she’s inherited from a neighbour. A homely object, hardly worthy of a sonnet or still-life. And yet, thinking of where its parts originated, who assembled it, and how it arrived at her door, could it not be considered as a source of awe?

There is nothing else in contemporary writing quite like this quest to think through the common objects that make up a comfortable life. Pawson makes us see in them all the parameters of history, slavery, genocide, as well as the joy of work, care, physical pleasure – until we realise that this extraordinary book is also a love story.

Our female narrator’s unrelenting focus on the details of domestic living spirals into moments of dark humour. Pawson’s courageous thought associations allow us to, perhaps, apprehend the darkness and light in our shared humanity.

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781923670112/spent-light--laura-pawson--2026--9781923670112

In today's episode, a conversation with Min Jin Lee, the acclaimed author of the major global bestseller Pachinko, who has returned with American Hagwon – a breathtaking contemporary epic that follows one family as they reckon with ambition and moderation, love and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty. Min Jin Lee was joined in conversation by Raeden Richardson, to discuss this new book.

John and Helen Koh and their three children – Bo, DH and Mido – are building new lives in Korea when they find their worlds upended, first by a terrible betrayal and then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Striving to regain their footing, the Kohs set out to do whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures. They leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in California, where new opportunities open for the Koh children, as the parents, strangers in a strange land, adjust to a difficult existence in which their qualifications mean little. Their way forward is lit by the faith that education will lead the next generation to the success and security that have eluded their parents.

The Kohs, their friends, relatives and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate love, work, fortune and fulfilment across the years. But with each new sacrifice and fresh horizon, larger questions begin to open up before them: what are we willing to give up to secure the happiness of the ones we love? What is the purpose of education? And what is truly important for a good life?

The titular Hagwon refers to the private, for-profit educational institutes or cram schools in South Korea that provide additional classes outside of regular school hours – by now a near-mandatory extracurricular activity for many of the country’s youth. Building on this, in American Hagwon, Min Jin Lee has crafted a transcendent, panoramic novel of profound emotional richness, where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions. This is the most ambitious and extraordinary work yet by one of our greatest novelists.

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780008823917/american-hagwon--min-jin-lee--2026--9780008823917

In this episode, a conversation with writer and reporter Michael Dulaney, author of a new nonfiction book, Sentinels. Humans have long observed animals for advanced warnings of danger – but what can they tell us about the growing threat of contagion in the age of climate change? Diseases today reveal our close ties to animals. Viruses leap from bats to camels to humans. Cats catch the flu, and tourists pass tuberculosis to elephants. In recent years, however, something has changed. Exploitation of the environment is causing more diseases to jump species than ever before – a threat to life that rivals climate change. The science is clear: the cause of this great acceleration is us.

In Sentinels, Michael Dulaney takes readers from southern China to the Andes, from the Arctic to Australia, to tell the gripping stories of the people and animals at the forefront of this enormous change. Dulaney joins ecologists tracking flying foxes through Australia’s eastern forests, and frog hunters netting endangered species on Indonesian mountains. Along the way, we meet lemmings that resist global warming, coastal seals with bird flu, and genetically engineered disease-proof pigs. Combining vivid field reporting with natural history, these stories move beyond the fear of contagion to explore the beauty and resilience of life, and the human capacity to regenerate as much as to destroy. Urgent, moving, and deeply informed, Sentinels is an essential reckoning with our intimate connection to nature, but also a call to build a fairer world for all.

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761381409/sentinels--michael-dulaney--2026--9781761381409

In this episode, another instalment of the Readings Kids Podcast, with Margo McGovern, author of Our Dark Unravelling, a thrilling modern gothic tale.

When Jude Sinclair is killed in a hunting accident, Lyssa and George feel like their lives have been upended. George is angry – she and Jude have unfinished business – while Lyssa is bereft, unable to accept that he’s gone.

In the wake of his death, Lyssa’s behaviour becomes strange. She disappears at night and seems increasingly exhausted and sick. When George questions her, Lyssa confides that she’s spending her nights with Jude, and an escalating series of disturbing events convinces their classmates that Jude has returned.

George assumes Lyssa is responsible for the ‘hauntings’ and decides to follow her at night. She is horrified about what she learns and knows that if it continues, it’s sure to cost Lyssa her life …

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761346309/our-dark-unravelling--margot-mcgovern--2026--9781761346309

In this episode, a recording taken from a sold-out Friday Night Poets session, held at Readings Carlton and hosted by Tim Loveday. This event featured readings from the poets Anders Villani, Andrew Sutherland and Paris Rosemont.

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase Anders Villani's 'Nespola': https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781764106887/nespola--anders-villani--2026--9781764106887

Click here to purchase Andrew Sutherland's 'Act Cute': https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781760995157/act-cute--andrew-sutherland--2025--9781760995157

Click here to purchase Paris Rosemont's 'Barefoot Poetess': https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781923044456/barefoot-poetess--2025--9781923044456

In this episode, a conversation with broadcaster and writer James Crawford, author of The Vanishing Earth: A Journey Through the Last Days of Abundance, a deeply reported journey into the scarred landscapes of global extraction.

Humanity has remade the Earth with astonishing speed. In the last fifty years alone we have taken more out of the planet than in all prior history combined. Across every continent lie the immense wounds left behind by extraction: the mines, quarries, poisoned rivers and hollowed-out towns that now form the true map of our civilisation and our age.

Everything we touch – rock, metal, sand, water, even thought itself – feeds the reckless dream pursuit of limitless economic growth. Born into a family and landscape steeped in fossil fuels, James Crawford travels through the living ruins of extraction and meets the people living within its extremes: exploring the radioactive fertiliser-ziggurats of Florida’s Bone Valley, the lithium flats of the Atacama, Greenland’s collapsing melt-edge, the desertified shores of Spain’s Sea of Plastic, and the resource-hungry cloud centres birthing new artificial intelligences, to expose the true cost of this hollowed-out dream.

Yet within these same landscapes lie radical alternatives. Hope emerges in the communities waging legal battles to leave oil untouched beneath the rainforests of Ecuador and the wildfire-stricken plains of Montana; technologists attempting to reverse extraction on Iceland’s tundra; and architects raising wooden skyscrapers amid Scandinavia’s felled forests – finding the path to repair for a world pushed to the brink. Incisive, immersive and visionary, The Vanishing Earth exposes the ideological forces that have shaped the planet and charts the essential pathways that could yet save it.

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761382116/the-vanishing-earth--james-crawford--2026--9781761382116

In this episode, a special conversation with Young Adult and Middle Grade Fiction writer Tamara Moss, author of a new book, Five Voices, a thrilling and addictive YA murder mystery.

‘Five Voices’ is the highly popular podcast founded by five friends – Rosie, William, Simone, Zac, and Ocean – who debate contentious issues while playing classic board games. Until one night when, an hour after a huge argument during a recording session of the podcast, William is found dead. Everyone claims innocence, but something doesn't add up ... somebody must be lying.

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761182761/five-voices--tamara-moss--2026--9781761182761

In this episode, a conversation with Anna Heyward, animal behavioural scientist and New Yorker writer, and author of a new memoir: Living with Freddie, a book about seeing the world from the point of view of man's best – and oft misunderstood – friend, the dog.

When Anna Heyward adopted a rescued Italian greyhound, she was thrilled to bring a dog into her life. But Freddie, she quickly realised, had severe separation anxiety, unable to be left alone for more than thirty seconds without crying uncontrollably, biting his own tail or scratching at his body. While some would have given the dog back, writing him off as a 'bad dog', Anna transformed her life. She took Freddie to work and hid him from her boss. Her social life withered. Her relationship with her fiancé began to flounder. She dedicated her life to entering the mind of her dog. As Anna observed Freddie's behaviour, she began to experience the world as he did: the quality of light, the timbre of sound; a leaf falling from a tree. And she changed – but not in the way you might expect. This is a meditation on what it means to be bad or good, on how much we can – or should – try to alter another being's behaviour, and on what is possible to know about another mind. But at its heart, Living With Freddie is a beautiful portrait of the relationship between a human and a dog.

Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780733654800/living-with-freddie--anna-heyward--2026--9780733654800