Poet, performer, emeritus professor, and new media artist Hazel Smith reads from and talks about her new book Ecliptical. We talk about metapoetry, multimedia, humour, eclipses, emphasis, John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, and lots more. Visit Hazel's website here: http://www.australysis.com/hsmith.htm My review of Ecliptical here: https://compulsivereader.com/2022/10/31/a-review-of-ecliptical-by-hazel-smith/ To purchase a copy of Ecliptical in both hard copy and digital visit: https://shortaustrali...
Nov 11, 2022•34 min
Sara Kidd joins me to talk about her new cookbook The Vegan Cake Bible. We cover such things as how Sara became the vegan cake queen, why she's drawn to cake, the extensive process she went through to create a cookbook including doing all of her own photography, how she chose which cakes to include, her favourite cake (hint - see links below), her 'holy grail' cake she wants to veganise, on collaboration, her feelings about the future of veganism and the planet, on coming to terms with sugar, he...
Aug 11, 2022•31 min
Bastian Fox Phelan reads from and talks about their new memoir How to Be Between . We talk about such things as speaking about the self with all of its multitudes, finding a voice, gender norms, facial hair, their nature writing, motherhood, what's next and much more. Find out more at Bastian's website: https://www.bastianfoxphelan.com/#
Aug 02, 2022•35 min
Beth Spencer talks about and reads from her new book The Age of Fibs . Beth talks about how the book came come together, about the transformation of her work through proximity, on the incorporation of popular culture, the relationship between artefact, memory, memoir and fiction, the way identity is a construct, on trauma and hope, and lots more. Visit Beth at her website: https://bethspencer.com Watch the video interview: https://youtu.be/Fr2_TD8VX6w Age of Fibs page: https://bethspencer.com/bl...
Jun 16, 2022•39 min
Michelle Cahill, author of Daisy & Woolf , joins me at Woollahra Gallery to read from and talk about her new book, writing through Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway , the burden of the canon, giving a voice to marginalised characters, literary decolonisation, the complex relationship between real life and fiction, intertextuality, the conjunction of place against time, and lots more. Visit Michelle's website: https://michellecahill.com 2016 Interview with Michelle on Letter to Pessoa: https://an...
Jun 03, 2022•33 min
Lorna Munro or Yilinhi is a Wiradjuri and Gamilaroi woman, multidisciplinary artist, poet, performer, radio and podcast host. She joins me today in the lead-up to the Sydney Writers' Festival to read some of her poems and talk about her work, her collaborations with Ancestress and Eric Avery as Poetribe, the power of spoken word, speaking language, decolonialisation in art, Yala Gari, the poet-in-residence program she created with Red Room for students, pushing boundaries, her new Red Room colla...
Apr 13, 2022•45 min
Kristina Darling interviews Nick Courtright about his new book The Proofs, the Figures: Walt Whitman and the Meaning of Poems . In “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman wryly remarks about one’s being “proud to get at the meaning of poems,” a comment highlighting the long-fraught problem of poetic interpretation and the pride-worthy intellectual labor required to elucidate the meaning of a text. Using Whitman’s own “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” an eight-line poem published in 1865, as its case...
Mar 19, 2022•27 min
Jessica Au’s first novel, Cargo , was published by Picador in 2011 and was highly commended in the Kathleen Mitchell Award for a writer under 30. She is the former deputy editor of Meanjin, and is currently an associate editor at Aeon. Her new book Cold Enough for Snow won the inaugural Novel Prize and was published by Giramondo, New Directions and Fitzcarraldo Editions in February 2022, and translated into fifteen languages. She joined us today to read from and talk about Cold Enough for Snow. ...
Feb 23, 2022•37 min
Charles Freyberg reads from and talks about his latest book of poetry The Crumbling Mansion and chats with me about performance and the power of memorisation, bringing characters to life, Kings Cross and its importance in his work, on nostalgia and ecological loss, on breaking binaries, his new work-in-progress and much more. You can find some excerpts from Charles' latest show in the links below: Trickster Spirits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIrN39Voqfk Vanessa Up the rickety darkened stai...
Dec 15, 2021•34 min
KA Rees is a writer of poetry and short fiction. She has been published by Margaret River Press, Cordite, Australian Poetry, Overland, Review of Australian Fiction, Spineless Wonders and Yalobusha Review, among others. She received a Varuna fellowship for her manuscript of short stories, she was shortlisted for the 2016 Judith Wright Poetry Award, was the recipient of the 2017 Barry Hannah Prize in Fiction and runner-up in the 2018 Peter Cowan Short Story Award, and the national winner of the 20...
Oct 13, 2021•38 min
On its one-year anniversary, we've re-aired, with permission, James Bradley's wonderful conversation with Beth Spencer from Climactic's ArtBreaker. James and Beth Spencer spoke about James' new book Clade, about climate fiction, and about the imperative for art and the conversation is even more relevant today and deserves a replay. Original publication is here: https://www.climactic.fm/show/art-breaker/james-bradley-author-of-clade-on-climate-fiction/ And do please check out the Climactic networ...
Sep 30, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Beth Spencer in conversation with Kit Kelen about his creative practice as poet, artist, publisher, collaborator, academic, mentor, musician and blogger. Kit reads selections from some of his many books intercut with original guitar tracks. They discuss Holden cars, bushfires, coal-addiction, and the role of place in his work -- as a writer who uses a lot of Australian idiom, colloquialisms and reference to landscape in his poetry, and who has also been widely translated. The process and benefit...
Aug 05, 2021•56 min
Lillian Avedian is an Armenian American journalist and poet from Los Angeles. In this episode she reads from and talks about her debut book of poetry, Journey to Tatev . We talk about many of the key themes in the book - the many journeys: physical, metaphorical, about the uneasy alliance between grandmother, mother, daughter, on coming out, the rejection of shame and the acceptance of the richness of desire, on the sensual evocativeness of food (especially Nazouk), on writing a duel language bo...
Jun 30, 2021•34 min
Adam Aitken reads from and talks about his memoir One Hundred Letters Home. We talk about the book's multi-genres structure, the limits of memory, artefacts and perception, "fluid subject positions" and the shifting nature of identity, his poetry book Archipelago and the ongoing appeal of France, his new book due out later in the year, and lots more. Find out more about Adam and his books at his blog: https://adamaitken.blog
Jun 16, 2021•36 min
Australian academic, writer, and poet, Michael J. Leach reads from and talks about his latest poetry book Chronicity. We talk about such things as the relationship between the visual/concrete poems on the page and their sonic qualities in live readings, the sensual, visceral nature of the work, how he chooses and works with constraints, his use of humour and the way he plays scientific precision against emotion, the way poetry enables him, as a scientist, to work better with the complexities of ...
May 23, 2021•34 min
Australian writer Emily Maguire's new novel is a clear-eyed and compassionate novel about love and family, betrayal and forgiveness, and the things we do to fill our empty spaces. In this interview, created for The Newcastle Writers' Festival's Stories to You series https://www.newcastlewritersfestival.org.au/news/#podcasts , Emily reads from and talks about Love Objects . Find out more about Emily here: https://www.emilymaguire.com.au...
Apr 14, 2021•35 min
In this guest episode, author and podcaster Alison Treat interviews Leslie K Barry about her book Newark Minutemen . Note that this is a re-pod from Alison's excellent podcast Historical Fiction: Unpacked . In this interview, author Leslie K. Barry talks Newark Minutemen , and its historical 1938 setting, including the little known history behind the book around a shadow Nazi party called the German-American Bund led by an American Fuhrer and inspired by Leslie's own uncle's role in fighting thi...
Apr 10, 2021•46 min
Chris Mansell is one of Australia’s notable powerhouses in the poetry world. Chris was one of the founders of Five Islands Press and now runs PressPress , an independent publishing house she founded in 2002. Chris has had over a dozen of her own books of poetry published as well as artist books, CDs, a collection of short fiction and even a children’s book. Her extensive body of work has been translated into many languages, and won many prizes including the Queensland Premier's Literary Award (p...
Mar 24, 2021•35 min
Does being vegan mean having to miss out on burgers, jalapeno peppers and deep-fried banana fritters? No way, according to Melbourne writer and vegan recipe developer Zacchary Bird. In this episode that aired for the Newcastle Writers Festival's Stories to You series, Zacchary spills the tea on his first book Vegan Junk Food .
Mar 10, 2021•31 min
Paul Rabinowitz talks to Tinfoil Crowns author Erin Jones about his novella The Clay Urn. They talk about the inspiration for his story, on working with a real situation--the Arab/Isreali conflict--in a fictional context, his evocative setting, his own experiences in the Isreali army, the complexity of war and the impact of that on young people, on seeing both sides of any conflict, key themes and takeaways from The Clay Urn , and much more. Find out more about Paul Rabinowitz at his website her...
Feb 16, 2021•19 min
The author of Black Rabbit and co-owner of Sappho Books reads from and talks about his latest novel and its quirky characters, about the impact of 2020, about themes and his writing style, the inherent beauty of writing for oneself, the value of small publishers, his work-in-progress, the book he's reading and loving (Janet Frame's An Autobiography) , and lots more. Angus' website: https://www.angusgaunt.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/angus.gaunt Sappho Books: https://www.sapphobooks.co...
Oct 06, 2020•32 min
Denise O'Hagan reads from and talks about her new poetry book The Beating Heart. We cover such things as how the book came about, the relationship between memoir, poetry, and meaning making, on the use of sensual stimulus and poetry is everywhere, on time, and the way our pasts are ever present, on the 'heart' of and in the book, on editing for The Blue Nib, and lots more. Connect with Denise O'Hagan at her website here: https://denise-ohagan.com and on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/DeniseOH...
Sep 21, 2020•34 min
Author, mentor, writing teacher and speaker Lee Kofman reads from about talks about her memoir Imperfect. In this brief but far-reaching conversation, we talk about some of Lee's key themes such as body surface and how it shapes us, the power of creative nonfiction, combining memoir and research and the connection for her, how she chose the people who were profiled in the book, the anthology she edited, Split, and lots more. Find out more about Lee at her website: https://leekofman.com.au/...
Aug 27, 2020•38 min
Nicola Redhouse reads from her book Unlike the Heart and talks about the way her research grew from her own postnatal anxiety to something much bigger, about the relevance of the literary perspective on scientific inquiry, her readership, the genetic links that drive us, on the way in which her book helped her family, her works in progress and lots more. You can watch this in full video at the Newcastle Writers’ Festival YouTube site: https://youtu.be/q0NCgiqxvdw Find out more about Nicola at he...
May 21, 2020•30 min
Maria Tumarkin reads from her award-winning book Axiomatic and talks about language and accents, the many different representations of time in Axiomatic: horizontal, vertical, chronological, cyclical, and 'real' and how she represents these multiple temporalities, about her characters and their complexities, about memory and the limitations of narrative, on axioms and the way they are true and not true, on productivity and caretaking, and much more. You can find out more about Maria's work at he...
May 08, 2020•43 min
Sophie Hardcastle reads from her latest and much lauded novel Below Deck . We also talked about many things including her Provost scholarship at Oxford, on being an artist-in-resident with Chimu Adventures in Antarctica, the big themes of Below Deck , including ecology, respect, compassion, and the interconnectedness of all things, the link between visual art and written art, the current pandemic, and much more. Full Video version here: https://youtu.be/82COIj2UXbw Find out more about Sophie's w...
Apr 17, 2020•34 min
Following the cancelled Newcastle Writers Festival, Gillian Swain and I decided to launch her new poetry book, My skin its own sky , online. The launch was featured in this year's online Newcastle Writers Festival #NWFSTORIESTOYOU (see video link below). My skin its own sky was published in Dec 2019 by Flying Island Books, and is Gillian's second published work following Sang Up (Picaro Press, 2001). Gillian lives in East Maitland with her husband and their four children, where they run their su...
Apr 10, 2020•26 min
As the Newcastle Writers Festival had to be cancelled this year due to Coronavirus, we did a virtual launch for Morgan Bell's poetry chapbook Idiomatic, for the people . The session, which we conducted with Zoom, was a lot of fun and after my launch Morgan read and spoke about several of the poems in the collection, as well as how the book came together. The full video version can be found here: https://youtu.be/1G3kbb2wCfU . You can buy copies of Idiomatic, for the people from the Girls on Key ...
Mar 21, 2020•39 min
In this guest episode, Daniel Flahie of the Die Healther podcast shares a recent interview with Dr Jim Reese on his new book Bone Chalk. Jim talks about how he became a writer, his transition from narrative poetry to prose (and the inspiration for that), the relationship between his personal experience with crime, working in prisons (especially San Quentin) and some of the surprising facts he learned doing so, and on writing crime, on the value of education, the relationship between writing, exe...
Feb 13, 2020•30 min
Roslyn McFarland reads from and talks about her new novel All the Lives We've Lived , and discusses such things as her transition from English teacher and author of English HSC text books to fiction writer, the Salt Pan Creek setting of her book, the unique narrative structure and multiple stories within the narrative, her work in progress, and lots more. Find more about Roslyn at: https://www.facebook.com/RoslynMcFarland.Writer/ Find All the Lives We've Live here: https://www.ginninderrapress.c...
Feb 04, 2020•34 min
