Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. Monkey Grip ushered in a new voice in Australian Literature. Released in 1977 it was Helen Garner’s first novel and the first time Australians had read such a frank account of bohemian life in Melbourne's inner north.
Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. That Deadman Dance was published in 2010 and is the third novel from Miles Franklin winner Kim Scott. Set in the Western Australian whaling port of Albany in the early 1800's it's an exploration of culture, first impressions, and the so called 'friendly frontier'.
Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. Kate Grenville's The Secret River released in 2005 became an instant classic, inspiring a sequel, a television series, and a theatre production.
Reading recommendations from writers Emily Gale and Tristan Bancks (both of whom write for both teens and younger readers); and the Books That Made Us Youth Fiction Prize. (Part 2 of our best reads recommendation on 10 December)
On Christos Tsiolkas' 7 ½: A Novel, Violet Kupersmith's Build your House Around my Body and Jason Mott's Hell of a Book with comedian and writer Matt Okine and writer and producer Sheila Ngọc Phạm
Reading Polish Nobel Prize winning author Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob and Marisa Fazio's novella Piazza Garibaldi with writers Amanda Lohrey and Bram Presser; and novelist and essayist Ann Patchett on These Precious Days and the bookshelf that shaped her
Join us for a road trip book club, with actor and director Jeremy Sims and novelist and academic Intan Paramaditha. Travel on foot, in a car, on a train, into both ravaged and familiar landscapes
Reading Michelle de Kretser's Scary Monsters, Richard Powers' Bewilderment and Jay Kristoff's Empire of the Vampire with guest reader reviewers food writer Adam Liaw and novelist Hannah Kent
Reading Hannah Kent's much-anticipated new novel, Devotion, Katie Kitamura's Intimacies and Mary Lawson's A Town Called Solace, with guest reader reviewers actor Geraldine Hakewill and novelist Graeme Simsion
Reading Emily Bitto's Wild Abandon, Karl Ove Knausgaard's The Morning Star and Elizabeth Strout's Oh William! with musician Tim Rogers and novelist Pip Williams.
Reading Jonathan Franzen's novel Crossroads and Ruth Ozeki's The Book of Form and Emptiness, with actor Marta Dusseldorp and writer and provocateur John Safran
Smalltown England in the 1830s and a city within a city in the early 1960s: stories of lives and loves, dramas and small moments well told. Reading Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle and George Eliot's Middlemarch with poet Miles Merrill and literary academic Margaret Harris
On the significance of English writer D H Lawrence and Alison MacLeod's novel, Tenderness; and reading Australian novels Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down and Hannah Bent's When Things Are Alive they Hum; with guests Patrick Carey and Assoc Prof Fiona Morrison
On Colm Tóibín's The Magician (a fictionalised life of Nobel Prize winning author, Thomas Mann), Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Velvet Was the Night and Sarah Bailey's The Housemate with guests Paige Clark and Mark Sutton
Novelist J P Pomare and memoirist Ianto Ware join Kate and Cassie, and the books discussed today are Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You, Paula Hawkins' A Slow Fire Burning and Pascal Janovjak's The Rome Zoo
Why is memory such a potent theme in fiction? On Jessica Anderson's Tirra Lirra by the River and Hugh Breakey's The Beautiful Fall, with guests - novelists both - Robert Lukins and Alison Booth
What does it mean to read like an Australian writer? Insights from writers Belinda Castles, Debra Adelaide and Nicholas Jose. Also, crime writer Will Dean on the dark fairytale woods of Sweden and the Bookshelf that Made Him; and a preview of The Big Weekend of Books
Boastful, funny, clever, skilled and much maligned: meet Geoffrey Chaucer's Wife of Bath, both his fourteenth-century invention and a fresh remaking of her in Karen Brooks' The Good Wife of Bath. Also, the feelgood book of the year, with Sarah Winman's Still Life. Mediaeval literature specialist Louise D'Arcens and novelist Robert Gott join Kate for a lively discussion.
Broadcaster and journalist Melanie Tait joins Kate to talk wild empathy, in Charlotte McConaghy's Once There Were Wolves. There are also reviews of Jennifer Mills' The Airways and Jessie Greengrass's The High House; the Bookshelf that Made English writer Sunjeev Sahota, and new poetry from Luke Currie-Richardson. (Cassie is away this week.)
Kate and Cassie join guests Larissa Behrendt and Tiger Webb as Irish writer John Boyne takes on the Twittersphere; Nick Earls spins a tale that takes us from Vienna during the Napoleonic Wars through Russia in 1916 and on to contemporary Alaska and Hong Kong; and in Christine Mangan’s Palace of the Drowned we're in a wet and spooky Venice.
Books writer Nicole Abadee and theatre writer Tom Wright join Kate and Cassie to read Amanda Lohrey's The Labyrinth, winner of the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award, as well as the other five books on the award's shortlist
Writers Rashida Murphy (The Historian's Daughter) and Michael Winkler (Grimmish) join Kate and Cassie as they read and review Mark Brandi's The Others, Sunjeev Sahota's China Room and Patrick McGrath's Last Days in Cleaver Square
Writers Kathryn Heyman and Aoife Clifford join Cassie and Kate as they discuss the tawdry and damaged in James Ellroy's Widespread Panic and Lisa Taddeo's Animal; while there's ice cold drama and poetry in Jon McGregor's Lean Fall Stand
Extended interviews by Kate Evans with writers Taylor Jenkins Reid (Malibu Rising and Daisy Jones and the Six) and Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal and Nev), following on from the recent music-and-fiction Book Club, and finding the 'bookshelf that made me' for both these writers
Double J's Zan Rowe and music journalist and novelist Barry Divola join Kate and Cassie as they talk music in books, focusing on Dawnie Walton's The Final Revival of Opal and Nev and Patti Smith's Just Kids (with bookish recommendations from musicians Amy Shark, Robert Forster and Emma Swift)
Travel to places both real and imagined with writers Heather Rose, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Richard Fidler and Tegan Bennett Daylight, in conversation with Kate Evans onstage at the Sydney Writers Festival
Kate and Cassie are joined this week by poet and music writer Mark Mordue, singer-songwriter Darren Hanlon and Music Show colleague Andrew Ford; and the books discussed are Taylor Jenkins Reid's Malibu Rising, Kate Sawyer's The Stranding and Helen Oyeyemi's Peaces - with a side serving of music on the page.
Novelist Meg Mason (Sorrow and Bliss) and journalist Michael Dulaney join Cassie and Kate as they discuss Briohny Doyle's Echolalia and Angelike Schrobsdorff's You Are Not Like Other Mothers; and English writer Elizabeth MacNeal reveals the books and ideas that shaped Circus of Wonders
Kate and Cassie are joined by reviewer Dr Ruth Wilson, whose PhD on Jane Austen and education was awarded last year, when she was 88 years old. Together, they read Joan Silber's Secrets of Happiness and Alice Pung's One Hundred Days
Crime writer Michel Robotham and playwright Joanna Murray Smith join Kate and Cassie to discuss the work of Patricia Highsmith, high priestess of dark psychological thrillers. With cameos by Highsmith herself, her biographer Richard Bradford, crime writer and singer Jane Clifton, and featuring critiques from members of the ABC Book Club Facebook Group
