Kate DiCamillo has a deep understanding of reading as a means of connecting us – as the former National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, she has advocated for the importance of stories as a means by which children can see the world clearly. Her children’s stories and middle grade novels, from Flora and Ulysses to Because of Winn-Dixie, are treasured by readers of all ages for their careful, tender – and often magical – depictions of how it feels to grow up. She speaks with Sally Rippin.

For the Wheeler Centre, Brodie Lancaster and Kamna Muddagouni present a special live taping of an episode of their podcast, Can U Not? – with Millennial's Megan Tan as their featured guest. Tune in for a discussion of coming of age, figuring yourself out and making things happen – in Australia and America.

For our second meeting of the Longform Society, we look at Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, an exhilarating, genre-defying work of feminism, queer theory and memoir. Strikingly original and immediately beloved, Nelson’s unique writing effortlessly moves between compelling literary criticism and memoir. Using selected extracts, Quinn Eades, Hannah McCann, Onyx Carmine (S.J. Norman) and Sophie Cunningham discuss Nelson's philosophical questions of queer family-making, art, literary history, sexual politics and more.

Maher Mughrabi and Jasim Husain discuss what the May 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis says about the region in 2017 more broadly. How will the downturn in fossil fuel prices affect the political stability of gulf states? How are different regimes in the region responding to opposition groups? And what can we expect in terms of interventions (or lack thereof) from the Trump administration?

On Sunday 2 July, crowds filled the Melbourne Town Hall to pay tribute – and share in the humour of – the late satirist John Clarke. Today, we're sharing a full audio recording of the event.

What do our minds retain, what do they discard, and why? Diving deep into the subconscious for this discussion, we explore the latest in psychology and neuroscience to gain some novel perspectives around forgetting. Is memory loss a natural part of ageing? When is forgetting a brain malfunction, and when it is a healthy, cleansing act of the subconscious? Can forgetting be as valuable as remembering? Can forgetting spur creativity? Join us for a fresh and memorable conversation on the psychological, scientific and even psychoanalytical processes of forgetting. Physician and writer Leah Kaminsky hosts a panel including psychiatrist and Alzheimer's researcher Ashley Bush, behavioural neuroscientist Jee Hyun Kim and psychoanalyst Leonardo Salvador Rodríguez.

Jane Gilmore, Rebecca Shaw, Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Lucy Valentine are writers who put their words, beliefs and opinions on social media – with the intention of connecting, challenging others and pursuing change. With host Sophie Black, they talk about #writingwhilefemale. How do women participate in digital discussion? How do they end up in arguments, decide when to continue them … and what do they do when argument becomes abuse? And, in this odd amalgam of public and private space, how do women edit their own balance of the political and personal?

What does it mean to write the self, or to write about nationhood – and how do we best fight to ensure others understand how we want to be seen? Host Jane Caro talks with three acclaimed international authors and artists – Paul Beatty, Susan Faludi and Ivan Coyote – whose work is driven by a challenge to interrogate how we move between categories, or are forced to inhabit them.

Matar’s latest book, The Return, describes this hideous quest with exquisite skill and sorrow. In April, it won a Pulitzer Prize. His previous books, the Booker-shortlisted novel In the Country of Men and Anatomy of a Disappearance, dealt with similar themes, winning praise from the likes of J.M. Coetzee. In this episode of the Wheeler Centre podcast, this extraordinary writer makes his second visit to the Wheeler Centre to discuss his life, career and the art of recollection with Hilary Harper.

In this conversation, Slate Culture Gabfest's Dana Stevens and Stephen Metcalf join Bhakthi Puvanenthiran, Mel Campbell and Cerise Howard for a chat about the form and craft of criticism, exploring new and evolving formats and the implications for artists, audiences and working critics themselves. Our panelists – who work across podcast, radio and prose – will weigh up the differences between conversational criticism versus the traditional model of the solo, written perspective.