The Readings Podcast

In this episode, a conversation with Sonny Jane Wise, a trans, multiply neurodivergent & disabled public speaker, advocate and author.

Wise’s most recent book, We’re All Neurodiverse, is an affirming and thoughtful guide to how and why we need to fundamentally shift our thinking about neurodivergent people. Through interviews, narratives, and the lens of their own raw experiences, they consider how current systems and structures that impact neurodivergent people are rooted in outdated capitalist and racist frameworks, and how these need to change and adapt to be neurodiversity affirming.

Powerful and persuasive, this book is a clarion call for a kinder and more neurodiversity affirming society.

In this episode, a conversation with the new Executive Director and CEO of Stella, Fiona Sweet.

Stella is a major voice for gender equality and cultural change in Australian literature. Founded in 2012, the organisation’s flagship program is the annual Stella Prize – a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing.

Stella also delivers a suite of year-round initiatives which actively champion Australian women writers, tackle gender bias in the literary sector, and connect outstanding books with readers.

In this episode, a conversation with Jeanine Leane, Wiradjuri poet, writer and academic. Author of the acclaimed novel Purple Threads, winner of the David Unaipon Award, Leane’s poetry has also been widely awarded and commended across an extensive career as both a writer and a teacher.

Her newest book, the poetry collection Gawimarra: Gathering, moves from deeply tender meditations on Country, culture and kinship, to experimental archival poems dissecting the violence and destruction of the settler-colony. This special book is the result of decades of poetic, political, and cultural work and reflection.

In this episode, a conversation with Alex and Stephanie Miller, discussing Miller’s most recent book, A Kind of Confession. The book is a secret look into Alex Miller's writing life, spanning sixty years of creativity and inspiration.

As a young man in 1961 Miller left his work as a ringer in Queensland and set out to achieve his dream of becoming a serious novelist. It was not until 1988 that his first novel, Watching the Climbers on the Mountain, was published. Twelve more novels would follow, all bestsellers, many published internationally. This selection from his notebooks and letters makes it exhilaratingly evident that Miller has been devoted to finding and telling stories that are profound, substantial and entertaining, stories that capture both intellect and emotion.

Miller's fascinating life is told in a personal, behind-the-scenes exploration of his struggle to become a published writer, his determination, his methods of creative thought and the sources of his inspiration. His writing, sometimes in anger and despair, sometimes with humour and joy, whether created for publication or for private meditation, is alive with ideas, moral choices, commentary, encouragement, criticism and love.

In this episode, a conversation with Damien Linnane: writer, artist, and editor of Paper Chained, an art and writing magazine for prisoners. Linnane’s memoir Raw chronicles a childhood marred by physical and sexual abuse, and a man’s subsequent search for identity in unhealthy places, such as violent gangs and the military.

In this episode, a conversation with Helen Hayward, academic, writer, and author of Home Work.

When Helen Hayward had her two children in London, 25 years ago, she found looking after them easy. Loving and looking after her kids was straightforward. However loving and looking after her home was not. She had long been instructed to put her career first. So she did. Yet what to do with the mushrooming laundry by the bathroom door? And what about if she actually liked cooking?

Home Work is a series of personal essays motivated by three questions.

In this episode, a conversation with Sam Sempill, chef, architect, and now author of Eat Lao: Recipes from a Lao Kitchen.

The recipes in this book follow the trail of Sam's grandmother's cooking back to Lao. The food her grandmother cooked has remained a constant in Sam's life, providing her with a connection back to a country she left as a child. They celebrate the uniqueness of the Lao food tradition.

Each recipe, like the scent of a signature perfume, evokes memories of a certain moment in time, and tells the story her family's journey from Lao to Australia. The recipes in this book aim to keep those memories alive and to share the unique flavours, joy and love of cooking from a Lao kitchen.

In this episode, a conversation recorded at the launch of Raimond Gaita’s Justice and Hope: Essays, Lectures and Other Writings.

For more than three decades the incomparable voice of Raimond Gaita has been summoning us to new conversations that deepen our understanding of what matters most to human life and awaken the sense of our common humanity. For Gaita, we are never more fully alive than when we are fully present to one another in conversation.

In a time when modes of communication tend to superficiality and self-promotion, when political debates are increasingly inured to lies and even violence, and the moral demands of dialogue give way to a torrent of competing monologues, Gaita's invitation to rediscover what genuine conversation requires of us could not be more timely.

Gaita was joined in conversation by Maria Tumarkin.

In this episode, a conversation with Melbourne's favourite historian, Robyn Annear. In Corners of Melbourne, Annear takes us on an unorthodox tour of the city's streets and corners, telling stories about the events and people that have made these the most interesting places to be.

In this (appropriately corner-shaped) book she will introduce you to - street-corner 'galvanisers' who offered the thrill of electric shock at threepence a time, the rude boys of the Fitzroy back streets who became the original 'larrikins' infants named for the corners on which they'd been abandoned, a rogues' gallery of unruly women, incorrigible men and runaway horses ... and, of course, the civic reprobates who discarded orange peel in the streets, to the risk of life and limb.

In this episode, a conversation with Ron Rash, author of The Caretaker.

It is 1951; the close-knit community of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, does not welcome those who are different. Jacob Hampton’s wealthy parents disinherited him when he married Naomi, an uneducated hotel maid from out of town. They had bigger plans for him. Now Jacob has been called up to fight in Korea, leaving a pregnant Naomi behind. The only person he can entrust to take care of her is his lifelong friend, Blackburn Gant.

The titular Caretaker, tending the local cemetery alone, is an outsider too, his appearance irrevocably altered by childhood disease. Slowly the two outcasts grow closer, their friendship blooming under small acts of kindness. Then, as they await news of Jacob’s return, a terrible, shattering act of deception derails all their lives.

Ron Rash is a poet, novelist, writer of short stories, and an educator, holding the Parris Professorship in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University, teaching poetry and fiction. The Caretaker is his eighth novel, and he has produced four collections of poetry and numerous volumes and contributions of short stories, as well as a children’s book. Nominated for and winner of many awards across his career, he’s been twice a finalist for a PEN Faulkner award.