The Wheeler Centre

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode we’re talking to Rawah Arja about her debut young adult novel The F Team, a funny and authentic story about what it means to grow up in Australia today.

‘I always say to the kids that I teach, and the kids that I mentor in schools, I never want to be in a room where everybody looks and sounds like me. I believe growth and learning in life is about mixing with people that are different to you... I think everybody has the right to tell their own story. For a long time in publishing, I got used to being comfortable with the back of the line. And I thought that was where I should be... I should be happy that at least I'm even in the line. And then you grow up and you realise that no, I have every right to be at the front of the line, because my story is just as amazing as everybody else's.’

The F Team is out now through Giramondo.

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It's been 20 years since Aileen Moreton-Robinson wrote Talkin’ Up to the White Woman, the seminal work of Australian First Nations scholarship that exposed the blinding whiteness, and the serious limitations, of Australian feminist thought.

In her book, Moreton-Robinson traces and honours the history of Indigenous women’s activism in Australia and lays bare some uncomfortable truths about white women’s complicity in racial oppression. She exposes, too, the prevalence of biased and blinkered thought prevalent within white feminist academia. Talkin’ Up to the White Woman has shaped the thinking of feminist and First Nations scholars across the globe.

Aileen Moreton-Robinson

To launch our Broadly Speaking series, we’re presenting the formidable Moreton-Robinson in conversation with critical race and whiteness scholar Fiona Nicoll. The pair discuss the twentieth anniversary of Talkin’ Up to the White Woman. What questions and experiences informed the writing of the book, and how does it seek to understand power? How did Moreton-Robinson experience colonialism in academia? How do some feminist movements clash with ideas of Indigenous sovereignty – and what are some alternative ways of thinking?

A transcript of this event is available to read here.

Presented in collaboration with State Library of Queensland and RMIT Social and Global Studies Centre.

The Broadly Speaking series is proudly supported by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and family.

#TWCBroadlySpeaking

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode we’re talking to Robbie Arnott about his novel The Rain Heron, a lyrical, compelling ecological thriller about our relationship with the natural world. The Rain Heron is equal parts horror and wonder, and utterly gripping.

‘I think all stories are human stories, in a way. I knew [that] I wanted to write a lot about the environment, and I wanted to create these worlds that felt very visceral and tangible while also being quite fantastical… I tried to have all the imaginative elements as things that feel like they fit neatly into these people's lives and into the world they live in. I didn't want to over explain them or make it feel like I was heaping on a bunch of exposition about why there's a bird made out of rain... And I thought, if it's something that characters just accept, then they'll feel more human.’

The Rain Heron is out now through Text Publishing.

Download a PDF transcript of this episode here.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Photo: Claudia Baxter

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode, Stella Charls speaks with Mirandi Riwoe about her novel, Stone Sky Gold Mountain. It's a heartbreaking and universal story about the exiled and displaced; about those who encounter discrimination, yet yearn for acceptance.

‘I don’t believe in being prescient by giving [characters] thoughts and actions that would have been totally out of place, but I think there is a place for bringing the story … closer to what it actually probably was. […] Fiction is handy; you’re building up empathy for these characters that are representative of actual people, and what they actually did think.’

Stone Sky Gold Mountain is out now through UQP.

A PDF transcript of this interview will be available soon.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode we’re talking to Laura Jean McKay about her novel The Animals in That Country, a bold, exhilarating and original novel that asks what would happen, for better or worse, if we finally understood what animals were saying.

‘And of course, the animals don't say the things that humans wish that they were saying. They're not saying "I ruff you!" or anything like that. They're quite brutal, their relationship with humans is really fraught, because that's the way that human relationships are with animals. As they get to know each other they are trying to navigate this new space together.’

The Animals in That Country is out now through Scribe Publications.

Download a PDF transcript of this episode here.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode we’re talking to James Bradley about his novel Ghost Species, an exquisitely drawn and deeply affecting exploration of connection and loss in an age of climate catastrophe.

‘It seems to me that the single most defining thing we face as a species is this kind of environmental transformation we're in the middle of, and we just don't talk about it. You know, Amitav Ghosh talks about the great derangement, that kind of complete erasure of this incredibly important thing from our cultural and political lives. And although there is a lot more fiction in this space [recently] ... I find myself wondering: why isn't all fiction about this?’

Ghost Species is out now through Hamish Hamilton.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode we’re talking to Imbi Neeme about her novel, The Spill, a compassionate portrait of a fractured family piecing together their different recollections of the past.

'No two people ever experience or remember the same thing in the same way, especially when they're sisters. The Spill is about two sisters who we meet in the present day. Their mother has just passed away and they are ostensibly estranged from each other. At the heart of the novel is this accident they were in as young girls, where their mother was driving. No one was particularly hurt in that accident, but the impact of it is felt for decades afterwards. And so we explore more of these sisters' pasts, shared and sometimes quite separate. And over time we come to understand a little more about how they've become who they are.'

The Spill is out now through Penguin Random House.

Download a PDF transcript of this episode here.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode we’re talking to Georgina Young about her debut novel, Loner.

Loner is a fresh and honest novel from the winner of the 2019 Text Prize. Smart, funny and deeply compassionate, it is a coming-of-age tale about the paths we take to find out what we want to do with our lives.

Loner is out now through Text Publishing.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kate Torney, Susan Orlean and Paul Holdengräber at the Athenaeum Theatre

'The boundary between society and the library is porous,' Susan Orlean has written. 'Nothing good is kept out of the library, and nothing bad.'

What do libraries mean to us – as public places and civic institutions? Why do attacks on libraries evoke a special kind of horror? And what do libraries represent in the collective imagination and in literary history?

In partnership with State Library Victoria, we brought together two great American thinkers who have spent years of their lives immersed in the world of libraries. Paul Holdengräber was the former curator of conversations at the New York Public Library, and is the founding executive director of the Onassis Foundation LA, a centre for dialogue in Los Angeles which is an outpost of the Onassis headquarters in Athens. Susan Orlean is a bestselling author and New Yorker staff writer whose latest work, The Library Book, combines memoir with an investigation of the unsolved 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire.

In an extravagantly nerdy conversation, they discuss the past, present and future of public libraries; why we love them, and why we can’t do without them. Hosted by Kate Torney.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode we’re talking to Victoria Hannan about her novel, Kokomo.

Kokomo is a stunning debut novel from the winner of the 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. Both tender and fierce, heartbreaking and funny, Kokomo is a story about how secrets and love have the power to bring us together and tear us apart.

‘When I was writing it I had this thought of like, is anyone going to be able to empathise with what it's like to be stuck in your house for a long time? And now, we all know what that feels like, so I feel like Elaine is sort of relatable in some ways because she's inside (that's the mother character, Elaine), but also in other ways she wants to stay inside, whereas we're all just like, "Oh my God, I need to get out of this house". So I think people will empathise with her, but also find her a bit infuriating, maybe.’

Kokomo is out now through Hachette.

Download a PDF transcript of this episode here.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.