British author Benjamin Myers says he likes to be on the margins as a writer and his latest novel, The Perfect Golden Circle, is about the crop circles that appeared in 1989 in the English countryside and explores the type of people who created them. Also Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell explain their genre-bending book, Mothertongues and Noongar author, Claire G Coleman's mysterious and unsettling book, Enclave, set in a walled Australian city.
Jul 11, 2022•54 min
For NAIDOC Week, three Aboriginal writers who are grappling with the past: Anita Heiss takes the 1852 Gundagai flood as the starting point for her novel Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray, Tony Birch explores his family history in Dark as Last Night and SJ Norman's, Permafrost, a collection of haunted short stories.
Jul 04, 2022•54 min
American author Madeline Miller has found a new audience for her prize winning novel Circe on #BookTok and now she has a new offering based on Greek mythology called Galatea. Also, Lauren Chater's real life inspiration for her third historical novel, The Winter Dress and Carrie Cox asks whether relationships are really meant to go the distance in her latest novel, So Many Beats of the Heart.
Jun 27, 2022•54 min
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brookes says she "didn't grow up as a horse obsessed girl" but rather her interest in horses was a result of a midlife crisis which led her to the history of a famous American thoroughbred that was the inspiration for her latest novel, simply called Horse. Also, John Purcell talks about his second official novel, The Lessons, and reveals his brief career writing erotica and Karen Manton explains the inspiration for her evocative novel, The Curlew's Eye, se...
Jun 20, 2022•54 min
Meg Mason thought her second novel, Sorrow and Bliss wouldn't be published, it was and is now shortlisted for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction, which will be announced this week. Also Australian writer Ennis Ćehić on his playful collection, Sadvertising, and American writer Leila Motley's debut novel, Nightcrawling, which she wrote at just 17.
Jun 13, 2022•54 min
Booker-winning writer Damon Galgut wasn’t always aware of his privilege, growing up as a white man in South Africa. Instead, he describes a ‘slow-shifting of consciousness’, that culminated in The Promise, a book he calls ‘my most South African novel'. Also, The Rosie Project author, Graeme Simsion, gives a tour of his writing space and Hilde Hinton on her second novel, A Solitary Walk on the Moon.
Jun 06, 2022•54 min
British Booker winner Julian Barnes's latest novel, Elizabeth Finch, is about a life-changing teacher and he tells the audience at the Sydney Writers Festival that "you become a writer by not being the child of a writer".
May 30, 2022•54 min
Canadian author, Emily St John Mandel, says the pandemic changed her as a writer. Her latest, Sea of Tranquility, was written during lockdown in New York and while it's a standalone novel, also features links to her previous books, Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel. Also, Goan-Anglo-Indian Australian writer Michelle Cahill's novel, Daisy and Woolf, is a literary homage and post-colonial critique of Virginia Woolf’s classic Mrs Dalloway.
May 23, 2022•54 min
Here Goes Nothing is the last in what Steve Toltz calls his trilogy of fear which began with A Fraction of the Whole. This latest book is narrated by a ghost who discovers there is an afterlife hierarchy and he is at the bottom. Also, Irish writer Audrey Magee on her second novel The Colony which is colonisation in microcosm and Toni Jordan's sixth novel, Dinner with the Schnabels, billed as a family dramedy.
May 16, 2022•54 min
Booker winner Douglas Stuart's second novel, Young Mungo, is again set in gritty working class Glasgow, but also explores blossoming queer love.And, two debut novels also exploring queer identity with Indyana Schneider's 28 Questions and Omar Sakr's Son of Sin.
May 09, 2022•54 min
We meet some of the most remarkable mothers in recent fiction, with authors including Dawn French, Douglas Stuart, Anne Enright, Lisa Taddeo, Larissa Behrendt and Alice Pung. These literary mums can be loving, neglectful and sometimes cruel – and they often reveal something about the author’s own relationship with their mother or children. Other featured authors include George Haddad, Craig Sherborne, Lydia Kiesling and Kate Mildenhall.
May 02, 2022•54 min
Jennifer Down doesn't turn away from uncomfortable truths in her Stella Prize shortlisted novel, Bodies of Light, about the systemic failures of the residential and foster care systems in the 70s and 80s. Also, we revisit our interview with Jonathan Franzen who talks about faith and family, which are two themes in his latest book, Crossroads.
Apr 25, 2022•54 min
Hannah Kent reflects on her time as an exchange student in Iceland and how it allowed her to pursue writing, and Michelle Johnston tells Claire Nichols about her novel, Dustfall, for the international literary event called Literature Live Around the World which was hosted by the Bergen International Literary Festival in Norway.
Apr 18, 2022•54 min
Pulitzer-prize winner, Jennifer Egan, is "interested in the ways technology interacts with our psychologies". Her new novel, The Candy House, plays with a deliciously dangerous idea: what if you could externalise your memory? And two books set in small town Australia: Mandy Beaumont's The Furies and Yumna Kassab's provocatively titled Australiana.
Apr 11, 2022•54 min
The Icelandic sagas have long been a source of fascination for Kári Gíslason and his latest novel, The Sorrow Stone, gives new life to an old Icelandic saga. Also disability advocate and writer Liel Bridgford explores disability representation in fiction with Kay Kerr and Jessica Walton, and Robert Lukins on his second novel Loveland set in Nebraska about two women who've experienced controlling marriages and asks whether trauma is inherited.
Apr 04, 2022•54 min
For his latest novel, Moon Witch, Spider King, Marlon James says "I was trying to connect with my own mythological history as a black man in an African diaspora, in a former British colony". Also, friendship in fiction with Susan Johnson, Juhea Kim and Paige Clark, and Perth writer David Whish-Wilson's writing space.
Mar 27, 2022•54 min
'I have a full and beautiful life', says Irish writer Marian Keyes, 'The only thing I can't do is drink'. And the experience of addiction and recovery is something she's given to the main character in her book Again, Rachel, a sequel to Rachel's Holiday. Also, Michael Trant writes a book on his tractor, Jane Caro explores coercive control in The Mother and Rhett Davis's debut novel, Hovering.
Mar 20, 2022•54 min
Karen Joy Fowler wades into American Civil War history and the story of John Wilkes Booth, the first presidential assassin, in her novel Booth. Also, Kalkadoon author Megan Albany's comic novel about death and Lloyd Jones's latest allegorical novel, The Fish.
Mar 13, 2022•54 min
Craig Silvey, Tony Birch and Dervla McTiernan share their love of reading from the Perth Festival Writers Weekend. They share their formative childhood reads, favourite first lines and give some writing advice along the way.
Mar 06, 2022•54 min
Isabel Allende says her latest novel, Violeta, was inspired by her mother but also by Allende's own life. Also, readers who send fan mail and the writers who reply with Markus Zusak, Anita Heiss, John Marsden and Krissy Kneen, and disability in fiction with Joseph Elliott and Kit Kavanagh-Ryan.
Feb 27, 2022•54 min
Our Country Friends is a funny book set in upstate New York during the pandemic by US writer Gary Shteyngart and Xochitl Gonzalez looks at the city through a Puerto Rican lens in Olga Dies Dreaming.
Feb 20, 2022•54 min
From young love and forbidden romance to break-ups and long-term relationships: hear authors wax lyrical about love. Writers include David Nicholls, Amy Bloom, Tayari Jones, Howard Jacobson, Monica Ali, Curtis Sittenfeld, Anita Heiss, Vivian Pham, C.S Pacat and Daniel de Lorne.
Feb 13, 2022•54 min
Jason Mott's Hell of a Book lives up to its name: it has a snappy title, an eccentric narrator and a Nicolas Cage cameo. Also, two authors who explore older Australian's experiences with Liz Byrski's At the End of the Day and Shankari Chandran's Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens.
Feb 06, 2022•54 min
Almost 20 years after Brick Lane, Monica Ali is still unpicking the ins and outs of relationships in her novel, Love Marriage. Also, Skimming Stones by Maria Papas was directly inspired by her daughter's own illness and Jack Ellis challenges a myth about childhood in Home and Other Hiding Places.
Jan 30, 2022•54 min
In her new book To Paradise, Hanya Yanagihara asks what would America be if its foundations were different. Also Katherine Collette's ode to Toastmasters in The Competition and Craig Sherborne's difficult mother in A Grass Hotel.
Jan 23, 2022•54 min
Two masters of the form, George Saunders and Tsisti Dangarembga, share lessons from their extensive writing careers.
Jan 16, 2022•54 min
The Booker-winning author Pat Barker's preoccupation with who's allowed to speak and who isn't continues in The Women of Troy , a sequel to The Silence of the Girls, her exploration of women in the Ancient Greek classics. Also, New Animal author, Ella Baxter, on how her writing relates to her artistic practice, and the final in Michael Mohammed Ahmad's trilogy featuring his alter-ego, Bani Adam, with The Other Half of You....
Jan 09, 2022•54 min
Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro introduces us to his latest creation in Klara and the Sun, and we also take a look at how authors name their heroes and villains with six writers including Tony Birch, Tabitha Bird and Mirandi Riwoe.
Jan 02, 2022•54 min
"It's such a contradiction in life how much we learn from suffering," says actor and writer Ethan Hawke who tells The Book Show about his fourth novel A Bright Ray of Darkness. Darkness and light is a recurring theme in our other author interviews with American Patricia Lockwood and Australian Jessie Tu.
Dec 26, 2021•54 min
International travel has been off the cards for many in the last two years, this literary world tour might be the next best thing.
Dec 19, 2021•54 min
