The Readings Podcast

Laura McPhee-Browne in conversation 02.07.2026 21хв

In this episode, a conversation with writer, social worker and counsellor Laura McPhee-Browne, author of the novel Worry Doll, a thrilling exploration of love and desire – obsessive, all-consuming, and impossible to look away from. On an ordinary day, two women meet on a train. Heloise – the older woman – lives with her boyfriend in Melbourne. Lacey – the other woman – is from Aotearoa and studies the clouds. What follows is anything but ordinary, a passionate affair that will consume them both in mismatched and maddening ways. Propulsive and lyrical, Worry Doll examines desire, memory, and the delusion of love. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761381850/worry-doll--laura-mcphee-browne--2026--9781761381850

Madeleine Gray in conversation 02.07.2026 23хв

In this episode, a conversation with Madeleine Gray, author of Chosen Family – a queer, epic literary novel for all readers by the award-winning author of the internationally acclaimed bestseller Green Dot. Books about friendship are not often described as love stories, but this is one. Nell Argall and Eve Bowman are both brilliant, odd and friendless. Traumatised in their first year of high school, their lives are changed forever when they meet. Set in Sydney over eighteen years, Chosen Family follows Nell and Eve as they grow into themselves, as they both love and destroy each other. Can the wounds of adolescent betrayal ever really heal? Can we ever really understand what is going on in someone else’s head? Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761635724/chosen-family--madeleine-gray--2025--9781761635724

Tony Albert in conversation 26.06.2026 24хв

In today's episode, a recording taken from the Melbourne launch of Tony Albert’s incredible new art book, Not A Souvenir, a landmark monograph that celebrates an artist, curator and cultural leader, whose work reshapes how we see Aboriginal identity, urging a more honest and hopeful vision of Australia's past and future. Tony Albert's art reclaims and reframes the imagery of Aboriginal Australia with wit, beauty and force. Across painting, photography, sculpture and installation, his practice explores Aboriginal culture, identity and history through a deeply personal lens. Drawing on individual and collective pasts, Albert transforms the visual language of colonisation – turning objects of prejudice into symbols of resistance, resilience and pride. Not a Souvenir is the most comprehensive publication on the artist to date, tracing his journey as one of Australia's most incisive contemporary voices. Across themes of past, present and future, the book unpacks the many critical questions raised in Albert's work: how do we remember, give justice to and rewrite complex and traumatic histories? Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781760764555/tony-albert--tony-albert--2026--9781760764555

Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff in conversation 26.06.2026 39хв

In this episode, we have a conversation with Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, co-authors of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. Who on earth is Elon Musk and what is he doing? Is he a hero, a villain, or does he swing constantly between those two poles? According to the constant media gush driven by his every act and pronouncement, Musk is best understood in personal terms. This book argues differently. Rather than seeing Musk as an individual, it sees him as an avatar of something called Muskism: a playbook for our new postliberal age. It’s not that Musk himself holds a coherent set of beliefs; you could say his life is one long improvisation. And he’s certainly never used the word Muskism – just as, a century ago, Henry Ford never used Fordism to define his own postliberal modernity. In exploring the forces that have shaped Musk, from South Africa to Silicon Valley, Space X to DOGE, Slobodian and Tarnoff outline the motifs and practices that have come to dominate our own crisis-ridden world. Muskism, they show, speaks the language of crisis and emergency to invoke a less human future: where humans are purged from the productive process and, through social media and video games, merged with the machine. This is a worldview in which the technocrat is king; which piggybacks on the state to achieve supremacy; and in which only a select few deserve salvation. If you enter, this book warns you, you will grind and you will live in the shadow of one man – but the rewards could be priceless and the alternative might be extinction. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780241805114/muskism--quinn-slobodian-ben-tarnoff--2026--9780241805114

Australian fiction favourites from our booksellers 19.06.2026 53хв

In this week's episode, we're doing something a little different. As Readings celebrates Australian Fiction throughout June, we're turning to the people who spend every day talking about books: our booksellers. Australian writers have shaped our literary culture and found readers around the world, yet they can still be overlooked in international conversations about great literature. Rather than trying to define a canon, we've asked Readings staff across our Melbourne shops to share the Australian novels they return to, recommend and love. From literary classics to contemporary favourites, these are passionate, personal recommendations celebrating the extraordinary breadth of Australian storytelling.

Griffith Review 92 contributors in conversation 11.06.2026 47хв

In this episode, a conversation with two contributors to Griffith Review 92. Griffith Review is a quarterly literary journal, with every edition exploring a different theme, bringing together long-form critical and analytical non-fiction and creative writing from the finest emerging and established writers from Australia and overseas. In his piece ‘Encircling the flames,’ Raeden Richardson reflects upon his time at Yale-NUS College, Singapore, and in her own work, ‘The limits of authenticity,’ Mindy Gill asks the reader to contemplate, just as she does, on literary culture, inclusion and the commodification of identity. The two writers were joined in conversation by Darby Jones, a writer and editorial assistant at Griffith Review, to discuss the themes of these essays more broadly. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781923213197/griffith-review-92--2026--9781923213197

Steve Toltz in conversation 11.06.2026 45хв

In this episode, a conversation with Steve Toltz, Booker-shortlisted author, and the writer of a new audacious, comic lament for a world that no longer knows itself – a novel titled A Rising of the Lights. In a reeling world of fraudsters and hypnotists, sleep talkers and estranged twins, false alibis and second chances, Rusty Wilson is beset on all sides by mysteries. Why was his childhood decided by a throw of dice, why has his wife confessed to a lover, and why do his parents no longer wish to see him? When Rusty loses his job to an AI system, Edwina, the mercurial friend of his youth, finds him a new role as an oracle to the young. But how can he advise anyone on what it means to be human when artificial consciousness appears within reach? If it's all just one more con, it's not clear who's scamming who. Besides, should any of it matter to Rusty, when all he wants is for those he loves to love him back? Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761355936/a-rising-of-the-lights--steve-toltz--2026--9781761355936

Patrick Marlborough in conversation 04.06.2026 36хв

In this episode, a conversation with writer and comedian Patrick Marlborough, author of Nock Loose. Set in the fictional coastal town of Bodkins Point, where an annual ultra-violent medieval festival has warped local history and identity for generations, it follows retired Olympian archer and former Tokusatsu stunt performer Joy as she embarks on a revenge quest through a landscape of grifters, weirdos, colonial ghosts and spectacular violence. Equal parts satire, thriller and fever dream, it’s a feral, funny and surprisingly heartfelt novel unlike anything else in contemporary Australian fiction. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781760997441/nock-loose--2026--9781760997441

Y.M. Abdel-Magied in conversation 04.06.2026 31хв

In this episode, a conversation with Y.M. Abdel-Magied, author, writer, commentator and the mind behind a new book, At Sea. Expert driller Zainab is called to take charge of a high-stakes oil rig operation. Unable to resist the opportunity, she leaves behind her pregnant sister and heads offshore for the job of her life. But there's a catch. The rig is teetering on the edge of disaster – and Zainab is the only woman amongst a crew of hardened men who want absolutely nothing to do with her. At the helm but forced to prove herself at every turn, Zainab labours to investigate the rig's imminent collapse. She quickly grasps that the real danger lies in the cold calculations and base desires of the men she is forced to spend every waking moment with. As tensions rise and secrets unravel, Zainab races to uncover the truth bubbling below and fend off the looming catastrophe. Explosive and thought-provoking, At Sea is an exhilarating story about the clash of ambition, principle and prejudice, and the unexpected consequences of our choices. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781837267095/at-sea--ym-abdel-magied--2026--9781837267095

Doireann Ní Ghríofa in conversation 28.05.2026 42хв

In this episode, a conversation with award-winning poet and writer Doireann Ni Ghriofa, author of a new book, Said the Dead. In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had she lived in another time, she too might have found herself held within those walls. Now, she notices a sign: FOR SALE. It is the first of many signs. Guided by an irresistible impulse, she follows them. Soon, she is trespassing, stealing, absconding from the routine of mother, spouse, daughter, as she uncovers a chorus of startling voices: those of the women who knew the hospital best. They murmur from archives and old records. They haunt from stairwells and walls. In them – and in one figure in particular – she may find meaning and solace, righteous anger, salvation even. Or her final vanishing? A work of sublime intensity and tenderness, Said the Dead breaks the boundaries between worlds – past and present, imagined and real, fact and fiction – to make something new and lasting: an experience full of danger, full of love and full of truth. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780571396177/said-the-dead--doireann-ni-ghriofa--2026--9780571396177

Susan Tomes in conversation 22.05.2026 30хв

In this episode, some different introduction music. This is Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne in B-flat minor, Op. 9, No. 1 (from 1832), and the reason is that today’s conversation is with Susan Tomes, a celebrated pianist, an author of Nocturnes and the Fascination of Night Music, an engrossing history of the music of twilight and sleep, from the nocturnes of John Field and Chopin to Max Richter. In an insomniac age, ambient and sleep music have become increasingly popular. But our association between music and sleep is not new: lullabies may be the oldest form of music and are instantly recognisable across peoples and cultures. Why does the night hold such musical fascination for us, and what forms do its sounds take? Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780300278897/nocturnes--susan-tomes--2026--9780300278897

Lisa Gorton in conversation 22.05.2026 54хв

In this episode, a conversation with poet and novelist Lisa Gorton. Mirror Landscape: New and Selected Poems is a tribute to Gorton’s achievement, and it brings together in one volume poems published over the past twenty years, from her first collection Press Release to her most recent Mirabilia. It also includes a substantial new sequence of poems, ‘Caesars’, on the relation between art and power. The title reflects Gorton’s fascination with the perspectives of space and time, and the ways in which memory and landscape, the past and the future, fold in and out of each other. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781923106734/mirror-landscape--lisa-gorton--2026--9781923106734

Yann Martel in conversation 14.05.2026 39хв

In this episode, a conversation with Yann Martel, winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize, and author of a new novel, Son of Nobody. In this new book, we meet Harlow Donne, who sacrificed his life to the study of the Classical world. When he is invited to Oxford University to work on an obscure collection of papyrus fragments it is an academic’s dream come true. He must leave behind his daughter and wife in Canada, but offers like this don’t come twice and he badly needs a change of fortune. Then, while studying in the Bodleian Library, he unearths a completely undiscovered account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilisation itself. He names the poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a commoner identified only as Psoas, the son of nobody. As sole translator and author of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter Helen, allowing the text to unlock the echoes of the ancient Greeks into the present day, and to share a personal message with his beloved child. Despite the two-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn’t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition, love and grief. A work of myth, history and domesticity, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them and how we live – then, now and always. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781923058811/son-of-nobody--yann-martel--2026--9781923058811

Antoinette Lattouf in conversation 14.05.2026 35хв

In this episode, a conversation with journalist and human rights advocate Antoinette Lattouf, the author of a new book, Women Who Win: Celebrating Courage, Conviction and Change. In this book, Lattouf highlights and speaks with women who defied expectations and shattered cultural and legal barriers – usually while being cast aside and asked to calm down. Threaded throughout is Lattouf’s account of her own landmark victory – one woman, armed with ethical resolve, taking on Australia’s most powerful media institution. In doing so, she sparked a global conversation on power, prejudice and the price of integrity in the press. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761355370/women-who-win--antoinette-lattouf--2026--9781761355370

Antoun Issa in conversation 07.05.2026 47хв

In this episode, a conversation with writer and journalist Antoun Issa, author of Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War. Beirut, Lebanon – 1974. Laila Khalil has just come of age for marriage. The eldest of five in a poor Catholic family, Laila knows that she must fulfil her family's expectations. But her heart is drawn to the handsome Nicolas, a coiffeur at a local hair salon. Dodging the watchful eyes in their patriarchal society, particularly those of Laila's domineering father, the two young lovers begin a tender romance. Soon, they make plans for marriage. But Laila's dreams are dashed when the Lebanese Civil War breaks out. Shells whir overhead as Laila's family are caught in heavy clashes between rival militias of Phalangists and those belonging to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. When tragedy strikes, Laila watches all her hopes wither to ash. But just as life seems at its darkest, a lifeline presents itself: the prospect of migration to a faraway land called Australia. Rebirth is the story of Antoun Issa’s mother, of the home and family she left behind, and of her new life in Australia. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780733651885/rebirth-wto--antoun-issa--2024--9780733651885

Angela O'Keeffe in conversation 30.04.2026 17хв

In this episode, a conversation with Angela O’Keeffe, author of the novels The Sitter and Night Blue, and now, a new work, Phantom Days. The stories that unfold in this book are, in part, told by a book. The book is a quiet observer, both as object and as subject, as listener and teller, primarily a witness to the story of three people – mother and daughter Maggie and Isabel, and another, Lewis. But there is another anthropomorphised object of powerful, narrative pertinence that also serves O’Keeffe’s explorations into the mysteries of many things in this novel: violence, love, and creation. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780702271151/phantom-days--angela-okeeffe--2026--9780702271151

Marissa Meyer & Tamara Moss in conversation 24.04.2026 24хв

In this episode, a conversation with #1 New York Times bestselling author Marissa Meyer and rising star Tamara Moss, co-authors of The Escape Game, a new YA mystery-thriller filled with sabotage, betrayal, and puzzles. The two authors were joined in conversation by Readings Marketing and Events Coordinator, Lucie Dess, to discuss their writing process (an intercontinental writing process, that is), their ideal escape rooms and what it’s like to embark upon writing a thriller.

Ana Schnabl in conversation 17.04.2026 28хв

In this episode, a conversation with writer Ana Schnabl, author of Flood Tide. In moderate physical decline, and with an immoderate weed habit, the novelist Dunja Anko returns home to the Slovene Adriatic coast to play detective and solve the mystery of her brother’s death. The going is arduous, the people inscrutable; her old friends have had years to forget – or to convince themselves they don’t remember. Dunja must contend with desire and disgust, curiosity and fear, as she begins to doubt her reasons for returning. Elegantly plotted, funny and self-reflexive, Flood Tide is a psychologically deft exploration of the trauma wrought by human limitation and indecision. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781739516154/flood-tide--ana-schnabl--2025--9781739516154

Patrick Ness in conversation 17.04.2026 33хв

In this episode, a conversation with Patrick Ness, acclaimed author, screenwriter and journalist. Ness has made a return to his bestselling Chaos Walking series and the setting of New World, with Piper at the Gates of Dusk. Something has been spotted in the night sky. Something that’s bringing back dreams of Noise, dreams of terror. Brothers Ben and Max have never really gotten on, each being more like one of their parents – Todd and Viola. But now they will have to come together, for something is coming. Blending sci-fi, speculative fiction and adventure with themes of power, division and hope, Ness has found another story he wants to tell, one that answers interesting questions and explores fascinating new frontiers but never loses sight of the heart that was so important to those first three books. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781529537581/piper-at-the-gates-of-dusk--patrick-ness--2026--9781529537581

The Comics Question: Mandy Ord in conversation with Bernard Caleo 09.04.2026 31хв

In this episode, another instalment of the Comics Question, where Bernard Caleo is in conversation with acclaimed comics artist, Mandy Ord. Ord’s work has been featured in numerous publications, and her books have received both national and international awards and nominations. In her new book, Sassy, Ord captures an animal-related encounter every day for a year bringing whimsy and delight to the weird and wonderful. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780646733371/sassy-a-year-of-animals--mandy-ord--9780646733371