Podcasts by The ABR Podcast
Welcome to The ABR Podcast, produced by Australian Book Review. Released every Thursday, The ABR Podcast features a range of literary highlights, such as reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary. Subscribe on iTunes, Google, or Spotify Podcasts, or whichever app you use to listen to your favourite podcasts.
For more information about ABR, visit our website, www.australianbookreview.com.au
Further podcasts by The ABR Podcast
Podcast on the topic Gesellschaft und Kultur
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'The Morning Belongs to Us', an essay by Siobhan Kavanagh from 2023-12-07T05:52:46
This ABR Podcast features one of the eleven shortlisted entries in the 2023 Calibre Essay Prize, ‘The Morning Belongs to Us’, by Siobhan Kavanagh. The 2024 Calibre Essay Prize, worth a ...
ListenJelena Dinić pays tribute to Charles Simic from 2023-11-16T01:14:56
In this week’s ABR Podcast, Jelena Dinić pays tribute to Charles Simic, the Yugoslavian-born American poet, essayist, and translator, who died earlier this year. After her own poetry re...
ListenMarilyn Lake reviews 'My Grandfather’s Clock' by Graeme Davison from 2023-11-09T05:08:39
In this week’s ABR Podcast, Marilyn Lake reviews My Grandfather’s Clock: Four centuries of a British-Australian family by historian Graeme Davison. Lake argues that Davison has...
ListenCatriona Menzies-Pike reviews Question 7 by Richard Flanagan from 2023-11-02T06:03:05
In this week’s ABR Podcast, Catriona Menzies-Pike reviews Richard Flanagan’s new hybrid work Question 7. Menzies-Pike argues that Flanagan’s ‘sweeping engagement with history u...
ListenZora Simic reviews Graeme Turner’s The Shrinking Nation from 2023-10-26T05:42:48
On this week’s ABR Podcast historian Zora Simic reviews Graeme Turner’s new book, The Shrinking Nation: How we got here and what can be done about it. Simic argues that state-o...
ListenJulian V. McCarthy on unleashing clean energy from 2023-10-19T00:38:12
On this week’s ABR Podcast, Julian V. McCarthy reviews Powering Up: Unleashing the clean energy supply chain by Alan Finkel. McCarthy endorses Finkel’s claim that conceptually ...
ListenKilling for Country – David Marr, Mark McKenna and Georgina Arnott in conversation from 2023-10-12T22:48:39
This week, on the ABR podcast, we feature a special conversation between author and journalist David Marr, historian Mark McKenna and ABR’s Georgina Arnott, recorded in the mid...
ListenA Voice to parliament, not a Voice in parliament from 2023-10-05T05:18:38
In this week’s ABR Podcast, we hear from Melissa Castan and Lynette Russell on the history and mechanics behind the Voice to parliament, the subject of next week's referendum. Melissa C...
ListenPenny Russell reviews Kate Grenville's Restless Dolly Maunder from 2023-09-28T08:05:13
This week on the ABR Podcast historian Penny Russell reviews Kate Grenville’s new book, a fictional account of her maternal grandmother. In Restless Dolly Maunder, Grenville re...
ListenDes Manderson on the 1963 Yirrkala Bark Petition from 2023-09-21T02:02:22
In this week’s ABR Podcast, Professor Desmond Manderson takes us back sixty years to the 1963 Yirrkala Bark Petition drafted by Yolngu leader Yunupingu. The Yirrkala petition called for...
ListenSarah Ogilvie's The Melbourne Dictionary People from 2023-09-14T07:57:48
In this week’s ABR Podcast, Sarah Ogilvie explores the mystery behind the Oxford English Dictionary’s (1928) Australian lexicon. Ogilvie, a former Director of the Australian Na...
ListenJoel Deane on The Great Australian Intemperance from 2023-08-31T06:06:11
This week on the ABR Podcast, we have Joel Deane with The Great Australian Intemperance, his essay on rising economic and political insecurity as reflected in the My Place movement, con...
ListenTwenty years of the Porter Poetry Prize from 2023-08-24T06:55:21
This week on the ABR Podcast we celebrate twenty years of the Peter Porter Poetry Prize with readings from six winners. We invited these poets to reflect on the prize and their winning ...
ListenJonathan Green on Walter Marsh’s biography of Rupert Murdoch from 2023-08-17T04:40:41
In this week’s ABR Podcast, writer and broadcaster Jonathan Green reviews Walter Marsh’s illuminating biography of the young Rupert Murdoch. Green explains that there is every reason ‘t...
Listen2023 Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist, Episode Three: ‘Our Own Fantastic’ by Uzma Aslam Khan from 2023-08-11T03:23:34
This week on the ABR Podcast, we celebrate the 2023 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist over three episodes. In each episode, one of the three shortlisted authors ...
Listen2023 Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist, Episode Two: ‘The Mannequin’ by Rowan Heath from 2023-08-10T04:35:44
This week on the ABR Podcast, we celebrate the 2023 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist over three episodes. In each episode, one of the three shortlisted authors ...
Listen2023 Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist, Episode One: ‘Black Wax’ by Winter Bel from 2023-08-08T05:54:06
This week on the ABR Podcast, we celebrate the 2023 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist over three episodes. In each episode, one of the three shortlisted authors ...
ListenJames Ley on J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K from 2023-08-02T22:35:41
On this week’s ABR podcast, critic and essayist James Ley reflects on J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K, forty years after its publication. Coetzee’s fourth and Booker...
ListenKevin Foster on Nick McKenzie’s bracing reportage from 2023-07-27T06:29:42
On this week’s ABR Podcast, Kevin Foster reviews Crossing the Line, journalist Nick McKenzie’s account of the defamation trial, Ben Roberts-Smith versus Fairfax. Kevin Foster i...
ListenGeordie Williamson reviews J.M. Coetzee’s The Pole and Other Stories from 2023-07-20T06:48:22
This week, on the ABR podcast, literary critic and editor Geordie Williamson reviews J.M. Coetzee’s new short story collection, The Pole and Other Stories. At the age of eighty...
ListenEbony Nilsson on the ALP’s uneasy history with immigration from 2023-07-13T06:57:29
In this week’s ABR Podcast, we revisit the Australian Labor Party’s long and uneasy relationship with immigration. Dr Ebony Nilsson, a research fellow at the Australian Catholic Univers...
ListenBain Attwood on the 1967 and 2023 referendums from 2023-07-05T23:42:25
This episode of the ABR Podcast looks at the history behind this year’s referendum on an Indigenous Voice to parliament and Indigenous constitutional recognition. Bain Attwood, Professo...
ListenDavid Rolph on Ben Roberts-Smith from 2023-06-29T05:33:40
On this week’s ABR Podcast hear leading defamation scholar David Rolph discuss recent proceedings in the Federal Court relating to the reputation of Ben Roberts-Smith, a decorated soldi...
Listen'Slut Trouble' by Beejay Silcox from 2023-06-22T02:26:55
This week on the ABR Podcast we revisit a shortlisted story from the 2016 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize: ‘Slut Trouble’ by Beejay Silcox. The provocatively titled story was rep...
ListenJohn Zubrzycki on Modi’s India from 2023-06-15T01:57:04
This year marks seventy-five years of Indian independence from Britain. The anniversary coincides with India’s Presidency of the G20 summit, which will take place in New Delhi this September. Th...
Listen2023 Calibre Essay runner-up Bridget Vincent with 'Child Adjacent' from 2023-06-01T06:25:48
In this week’s ABR podcast we hear from the runner-up of the 2023 Calibre Essay Prize, Bridget Vincent. Calibre judges Yves Rees, Peter Rose and Beejay Silcox praised Bridget Vincent’s ...
ListenDavid Rolph on Lachlan Murdoch v Crikey from 2023-05-25T01:31:52
In this week’s ABR podcast, David Rolph, Professor of Law at the University of Sydney, analyses the implications of the aborted Murdoch v Crikey defamation case concerning the January 6...
ListenTracy Ellis's 2023 Calibre-winning essay 'Flow States' from 2023-05-18T06:16:21
This week on the ABR Podcast we feature the 2023 Calibre Essay winner, ‘Flow States’, by Tracy Ellis. ‘Flow States’ begins with a single drop of water produced by a household tap left r...
ListenGordon Pentland on British politics as theatre from 2023-05-11T03:38:05
In this week’s ABR Podcast, Gordon Pentland examines the theatrical impulses of contemporary British politics. He argues that these performative elements are an attempt to capture wides...
ListenPatrick Flanery on Andy Warhol and Photography from 2023-05-05T04:20:39
This week, on the ABR Podcast, we look at a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia, ‘Andy Warhol and Photography: A Social Media’. Ten years in the making, ‘Andy Warhol ...
ListenDebi Hamilton on the world's addiction to background noise from 2023-04-27T03:35:08
This week’s ABR Podcast is a commentary from writer and psychologist Debi Hamilton on the world’s growing addiction to background noise. With sound in increasing volumes filling ever more space ...
ListenTony Hughes-d'Aeth on Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright from 2023-04-13T07:18:48
In this week’s ABR Podcast, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth reviews Alexis Wright’s new novel, Praiseworthy. Expectations are high: after all, Wright is the only author to have won both the...
ListenPeter Rose on Darryl Pinckney in Manhattan from 2023-04-06T06:23:31
This week’s podcast features a review from ABR Editor Peter Rose of Darryl Pinckney’s absorbing new memoir, Come Back in September: A literary education on West Sixty-Seven...
ListenSydney Modern: A new landmark building from 2023-03-30T03:55:32
In December last year, the Art Gallery of New South Wales launched its Sydney Modern project, the centerpiece of which was an extraordinary new building overlooking Sydney Harbour. Sydney Modern...
ListenJames Curran on Labor's foreign policy manoeuvres from 2023-03-23T04:04:54
In this week’s ABR podcast, James Curran considers the response of Asia-Pacific nations to the government’s decision to retain AUKUS, the major foreign affairs initiative of the Morriso...
ListenAnne Rutherford on All the Beauty and the Bloodshed from 2023-03-17T00:06:51
In this week’s ABR Podcast, film critic Anne Rutherford reviews Laura Poitras’s documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, last year’s winner of the Golden Lion for...
ListenShirley Hazzard: A writing life: an interview with Brigitta Olubas from 2023-03-09T03:36:53
Shirley Hazzard is widely regarded as one of Australia’s finest novelists, even though she published only four novels during her long lifetime. Now, Professor Brigitta Olubas from the University...
ListenLabor's new National Cultural Policy with Jennifer Mills from 2023-03-02T04:11:10
This week the ABR Podcast considers Revive, Labor’s new National Cultural Policy. In a commentary for the Marc...
Listen‘A Roānkin Philosophy of Poetry’ by Maria Takolander from 2023-02-23T04:01:32
The ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, one of the world’s leading prizes for shor...
ListenThe exterior and interior of modernist Vienna with Christopher Menz from 2023-02-16T03:52:17
Whereas many look to Vienna for its imperial architecture, the city developed a rich and complex relationship with modernist forms when they exploded across Europe in the early twentieth century...
Listen‘Leaving Elvis’ by Michelle Michau-Crawford from 2023-02-09T04:04:56
This week we feature the 2013 winner of the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, one of the world's leading prizes for a short story written in English. Michelle Michau-Crawford’s ‘Leaving El...
ListenThe Poetry of Peter Porter: Making with words from 2023-02-02T05:14:23
This week’s ABR Podcast is a special feature on the work and life of one of Australia’s finest poets, Peter Porter (1929-2010). Morag Fraser, currently at work on a biography of Porter,...
ListenTimothy J. Lynch on the American midterm elections from 2023-01-26T05:45:19
In this week’s ABR Podcast, Timothy J. Lynch, Professor of American Politics at the University of Melbourne, considers the November 2022 American midterm elections. Lynch finds reason t...
ListenDennis Altman on the teals from 2023-01-19T04:47:48
Since the May 2022 federal election, several books have been published seeking to explain the rise of the teal independents. In this week’s ABR Podcast, Dennis Altman, a Vice-Chancellor...
ListenPeter Porter Poetry Prize Shortlist 2023 from 2023-01-12T04:22:16
In this week’s Podcast we’re delighted to present the five poems shortlisted in the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. This happily alliterative prize was created in 2005 and renamed in 2011, the y...
ListenZoe Holman on Iran's Woman, Life, Freedom protests from 2023-01-05T02:14:42
What has spurred thousands of ordinary women in Iran and throughout the world to take to the streets under the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’? How unprecedented is this recent uprising in the his...
ListenPeter Rose on the Peculiar Charms of E.M. Forster from 2022-12-29T04:38:03
This week we draw on ABR’s expanding digital archive and head back to December 2010, when ABR Editor Peter Rose wrote at length about E.M. Forster, author of novels such as
Book of the Year 2022 from 2022-12-22T04:54:15
This week’s episode of the ABR podcast is devoted to the Books of the Year. ABR Editor Peter Rose, critic and writer Beejay Silcox and historian Frank Bongiorno discuss the boo...
ListenKevin Foster on Australia in the international arena from 2022-12-08T03:58:40
Unlike in the United States and several other Western nations, Australian governments are under no compulsion to consult parliament before sending troops to war. In Subimperial Power: Austra...
ListenPatrick Mullins on a new biography of Lachlan Murdoch from 2022-12-01T03:58:27
Lachlan Murdoch will almost certainly be the next head of News Corp, one of the world’s largest media companies and the dominant force in Australia’s media landscape. In this week’s ABR...
ListenAmanda Laugesen on boganism from 2022-11-17T03:33:42
In this week’s ABR podcast, Amanda Laugesen asks what the word ‘bogan’ says about Australian culture and society. Laugesen, who is Chief Editor of The Australian National Dictionary...
ListenAnne Rutherford on The Australian Wars from 2022-11-10T01:51:47
This week’s ABR Podcast features Anne Rutherford’s review of the new SBS miniseries The Australian Wars, published in the November issue of ABR. Directed by Arrernte a...
ListenRonan McDonald on one hundred years of Ulysses from 2022-11-03T03:16:18
In this week’s ABR podcast, listen to Ronan McDonald discuss one hundred years of James Joyce’s Ulysses, among the most famous books of the twentieth century. McDonald, who is ...
ListenClaudio Bozzi on the new test facing the Italian political system from 2022-10-20T04:26:08
Italy is used to political volatility. In today’s ABR Podcast, we learn about the new test facing Italy’s fragile political system following the cessation of the relatively stable leade...
ListenAn interview with Shannon Burns from 2022-10-12T06:40:58
In our October issue ABR Editor and award-winning memoirist Peter Rose reviews Childhood, a remarkable new memoir by Adelaide critic and writer Shannon Burns in which Burns rel...
ListenGideon Haigh on Daniel Andrews from 2022-10-06T00:22:26
As the November election date approaches for Victoria, Daniel Andrews is currently Australia’s longest-serving incumbent state premier. Journalist and author Gideon Haigh examines a new biograph...
Listen2022 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize Shortlist from 2022-08-10T01:40:48
In this year’s ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story prize, we received more than 1,300 entries from thirty-six different countries, a testament to ongoing international interest in the Joll...
Listen‘Ghosts, Ghosts Everywhere’ by Sarah Gory, runner-up in ABR’s 2022 Calibre Essay Prize from 2022-08-04T02:12
The runner-up in this year’s Calibre Essay Prize, Sarah Gory’s essay ‘Ghosts, Ghosts Everywhere’ confronts spectres of the past in order to pose questions about how to live ethically in the pres...
ListenPeter Rose on a tawdry new production of Verdi's ‘Il Trovatore’ from 2022-07-28T04:20:53
Based on Antonio Garcia Gutierrez’s El Trovador, a romantic melodrama set against the backdrop of a fifteenth-century Spanish civil war, Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore has been ...
ListenBen Saul on Western hypocrisy over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from 2022-07-14T00:03:03
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February this year was met with near universal condemnation by Western nations. While aggression of this kind and on this scale has been relatively anomalous...
ListenJohn Zubrzycki on illiberalism in Modi's India from 2022-06-30T02:17:52
A year before he ascended to the prime ministership of India in 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru proclaimed that his nation was ‘a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together...
ListenElizabeth Tynan on Australia as Britain’s atomic oval from 2022-06-23T01:15:53
Of the many pernicious legacies of colonialism, Australia’s servility in the face of Britain’s nuclear arms aspirations is one of the most under-reported and most consequential. In this week’s e...
ListenJohn Harwood on Gwen Harwood and the perils of reticence from 2022-06-16T02:39:27
Ann-Marie Priest’s My Tongue Is My Own, published by La Trobe University Press and reviewed in our June issue, is the first authorised biography of the Australian poet Gwen Harwoo...
ListenLinda Atkins on the politics and economics of abortion from 2022-06-09T04:24:47
The leaked draft judgment in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito proposed overturning the precedent set by Roe v. Wade,...
ListenPeter Rose on Richard Wagner’s music of hypnosis from 2022-06-02T04:08:01
Conceived during a holiday in the spa-town of Marienbad, Lohengrin stands at the crossroads of Richard Wagner’s operatic oeuvre: it was the last work composed before his ...
ListenBeejay Silcox on rhapsodising Helen Garner rightly from 2022-05-25T03:55:32
The Writers on Writers series aims to tease some of Australia’s literary treasures out of the Aladdin’s cave of canonicity. A collaboration between publisher Black Inc., the...
ListenFrank Bongiorno on enlarging our diminished sense of political leadership from 2022-05-19T00:59:10
When Scott Morrison called the federal election in early April, he did so on an apologetic note: ‘I get it that people are tired of politics.’ This was a predictable gesture from the...
ListenSimon Tedeschi reads his 2022 Calibre Prize-winning essay, ‘This woman my grandmother’ from 2022-05-05T00:14:20
Shortly before Simon Tedeschi’s grandmother, Lucy Gershwin, died sixteen years ago, she recorded a memoir of her wartime years. Gershwin, a Polish Jew, was the only survivor of a family ob...
ListenJoan Beaumont on Australian Studies at Harvard from 2022-04-21T03:53:23
The Gough Whitlam and Malcom Fraser Chair of Australian Studies was established at Harvard University in 1976 as a diplomatic gift marking the bicentenary of the American Revolution. It was also...
ListenJames Ley on fiction in the age of Amazon from 2022-04-13T05:36
When Jeff Bezos launched Amazon in 1994, few imagined that eighteen years later the company’s skyrocketing profits would actually launch him into space. What started out as a virtual books...
ListenKieran Pender on the Collaery case from 2022-04-06T23:48
In an age of disinformation, whistleblowers such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have been accorded the status of folk heroes. And yet, as their respective cases show, no other act of publi...
ListenThomas H. Ford on the irresistible rise of ‘brain fog’ from 2022-03-29T05:55
Few phrases captured the atmosphere of lethargy and disorientation in which many of us lived under lockdown as much as ‘brain fog’. The term has come to denote a whole range of sympt...
ListenPeter Rose reads from his ‘Editor’s Diary’ (July to December) from 2022-03-23T05:19
In this special episode of The ABR Podcast, Peter Rose reads the second and concluding instalment of his 2021 diary, taking us from July to December. These entries continue his chronicle of life...
ListenGeordie Williamson on the genesis of ‘Crime and Punishment’ from 2022-03-16T03:12
Author and scholar Kevin Birmingham has shown that books as much as people are worthy subjects of biography. This year he has followed up The Most Dangerous Book, his award-winning acco...
ListenMindy Gill on the mire of identity politics from 2022-03-09T05:33
Race, gender, class, sexuality – categories of identity have become central to not only our understanding of politics, but also our appreciation of art. Has the prominence of these categor...
ListenPeter Rose reads from his ‘Editor’s Diary’ (January to June) from 2022-03-02T22:22
For his sins, Peter Rose has always kept a diary. Over the years, ABR has occasionally published extracts, which have tended to consist of annual highlights laced with gossip and h...
ListenMiles Pattenden on Paul Verhoeven’s ‘Benedetta’ from 2022-02-16T22:59:46
Best known for films such as Robocop (1987), Basic Instinct (1992), and Showgirls (1995), the Dutch director Paul Verhoeven has made his name as a provocateur whose lu...
ListenFelicity Plunkett on American poet Tracy K. Smith from 2022-02-10T04:03:08
American poet Tracy K. Smith was the twenty-second Poet Laureate of the United States, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her 2011 volume Life on Mars. Such C...
ListenBeejay Silcox on 'Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller' by Nadia Wassef from 2022-01-26T22:53
In 2002, Nadia Wassef founded – with her sister, Hind, and their friend, Nihal – the Cairo-based independent bookstore Diwan. Wassef’s memoir, Chronicles of ...
ListenLisa Gorton on Helen Garner's third volume of diaries from 2022-01-20T02:50
‘I would like to write about dominance, revulsion, separation, the horrible struggles between people who love each other,’ wrote Helen Garner, foreshadowing How to End a Story Listen
Samuel Watts on the unnaming of Moreland City Council from 2022-01-13T00:33
Melbourne’s Moreland City Council recently agreed to adopt a new name, after petitioning by Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung community leaders and prominent local non-Indigenous representatives. The...
ListenThe Porter Prize poems as read by the poets from 2022-01-06T01:25:41
In today’s episode, listen to the shortlisted poets for the 2022 Peter Porter Poetry Prize – Chris Arnold, Dan Disney, Michael Farrell, Anthony Lawrence, and Debbie Lim – read ...
ListenTim Byrne on the Coen brothers’ universe from 2021-12-22T23:39:32
For nearly forty years, Joel and Ethan Coen – à la the Coen brothers – have been inseparable, operating as a directorial dyad since their 1984 début Blood Simp...
ListenPenny Russell on Yorta Yorta activist William Cooper from 2021-12-16T00:01
As momentum builds for constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, it is timely to reflect on the career of William Cooper. A Yorta Yorta elder and founding ...
ListenBrenda Walker on 'Leaping Into Waterfalls' by Bernadette Brennan from 2021-12-09T00:39:09
The late Gillian Mear’s two governing passions were horse-riding and writing – passions that came together in the fiction for which she is best-known, such as Ride a Cock Ho...
ListenPaul Muldoon on 'After Lockdown' by Bruno Latour from 2021-12-02T01:07:12
The French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour is one of the world’s most iconoclastic thinkers, and has recently turned his attention to the relations between human activity and the ...
ListenKrissy Kneen reads 'Dugongesque' from 2021-11-24T23:51:23
Each year, the judges of the Calibre Essay Prize face the difficult task of selecting a winner from an impressive shortlist. Last year’s winner was Theodore Ell for ‘Facades of Leban...
ListenHelen Ennis on the Australian photographer Max Dupain from 2021-11-18T04:35:02
The Australian modernist photographer Max Dupain is commonly known for his sweltering photograph Sunbaker, which offered the nation one of its most iconic beach images. In today&rs...
ListenJames Jiang on a new biography of Edward Said from 2021-11-11T06:08
Edward Said, most regarded for his pioneering study Orientalism (1978), led a varied life that combined rigorous scholarship with fearless activism. Born in Jerusalem and brought up in ...
ListenStephen Bennetts on the fight for native title from 2021-11-04T03:17:24
In May 2020, the High Court reaffirmed the Federal Court’s 2017 ruling that the Yindjibarndi people of the Pilbara region in Western Australia held exclusive native title to land on w...
ListenJudith Brett on ScoMo's many faces from 2021-10-28T01:11:25
Scott Morrison has now been in office longer than any of his four predecessors, and yet what do we really know of the man? In today’s episode, political historian and commentator Judith Br...
ListenMorag Fraser on a history of Afghanistan through clothes and culture from 2021-10-21T04:17:09
Tim Bonyhady is one of Australia’s leading environmental lawyers and cultural historians. He has previously traced connections between art and national mythologies in books such as
Mindy Gill on Colson Whitehead from 2021-10-13T22:15
Colson Whitehead is a critically acclaimed American author of eight novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys <...
ListenDavid Jack on Giorgio Agamben and the politics of the pandemic from 2021-10-06T01:59:19
Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s diagnosis of the condition of ‘bare life’ has assumed a new significance during the coronavirus outbreak. A new book, W...
ListenBeejay Silcox on Sally Rooney from 2021-09-29T00:58
It’s difficult to imagine a more hotly anticipated novel than Irish author Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You. Fiercely embargoed advance copies have sold for vas...
ListenYves Rees on the feminist significance of radio in Australia’s history from 2021-09-22T02:07
In the pre-television era of the early twentieth century, radio reigned supreme. It offered news and light entertainment, but also a means of communion and solidarity for the many women confined...
Listen'May Day', read by Anita Punton from 2021-09-15T04:11
ABR’s Calibre Essay Prize is one of the world’s leading prizes for an original essay. This year, we received a record field of 638 essays. Today we hear from Anita Punton, w...
ListenOn D.H. Lawrence: Frances Wilson in conversation with Peter Rose from 2021-09-08T00:28
‘Other biographers write about him as if he were a normal person, not the weirdest man who ever lived.’ So says Frances Wilson, British author of the book Burning Man (...
ListenJoel Deane on Facebook’s demise from 2021-09-01T07:39:44
In today’s episode, listen to Joel Deane read his review of An Ugly Truth by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, an account of Facebook’s meddling in the 2016 US elections that...
ListenJohn Richards reads 'A Fall from Grace' from 2021-08-25T00:14:10
This year, the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize received nearly 1500 entries from thirty-six different countries, a record field. Placed third was ‘A Fall from Gra...
Listen‘An die Nachgeborenen: For those who come after’ by Elisabeth Holdsworth from 2021-08-18T01:22
In today’s episode, ABR looks back at the winner of the inaugural Calibre Essay Prize in 2007: ‘Listen
Camilla Chaudhary reads ‘The Enemy, Asyndeton’ from 2021-08-11T04:55
Recently, for the eleventh time, ABR presented the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. This year the Prize attracted 1,428 entries, from thirty-six different countries. In a virtual ceremony last n...
ListenStephen Bennetts on the 'Dark Emu' debate from 2021-08-04T00:00:52
Few books have had as decisive an impact on the history of Indigenous Australian land management as Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu. And yet, as Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe argue in Farmers or Hunter-gat...
ListenTheodore Ell in conversation with Beejay Silcox from 2021-07-28T01:40
On 4 August 2020, Theodore Ell was living in Beirut, Lebanon, when an explosion erupted at the local port, killing more than 200 people and injuring more than 7,500. Ell and his wife, a diplomat, s...
ListenOn the Australian poet Francis Webb from 2021-07-14T00:34:41
Francis Webb, an Australian poet born in 1925, was widely regarded by his contemporaries as one of the most gifted poets of his generation. His creative output was extensive, despite a troubled lif...
ListenTheodore Ell reads 'Façades of Lebanon', winner of the Calibre Essay Prize from 2021-07-07T01:01:57
Theodore Ell was living in Beirut, Lebanon, on 4 August 2020 when an explosion devastated the city and shook a nation already teetering on the brink of economic collapse. Ell and his wife, a diplom...
ListenPaul Muldoon on the Yoo-rrook Justice Commission from 2021-06-30T07:05:17
In 2020, the Victorian government declared it would establish a Truth and Justice process to ‘recognise historic wrongs and address ongoing injustices for Aboriginal Victorians’. The Yoo-rrook Just...
ListenPoetry in times of recovery | Ft. Sarah Holland-Batt, Anders Villani, Felicity Plunkett, and more from 2021-06-23T03:43
As the world realigns itself in the wake of a global pandemic, ABR turns its thoughts to the various forms – individual and institutional, material and more intangible – that recovery may take. In ...
Listen'Bunker' by Josephine Rowe from 2021-06-16T02:17:30
In today's episode, Josephine Rowe – winner of the 2016 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize – reads a new short story, 'Bunker', which appears in the June issue of ABR. Josephine has published t...
ListenMartin Thomas on Patrick White from 2021-06-09T01:14:23
Patrick White, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973, has long been considered Australia’s finest novelist. And yet, the thirtieth anniversary of his death in 2020 passed by with barely ...
ListenIlana Snyder on Israel and Palestine from 2021-06-02T04:08
In today's episode, Ilana Snyder – President of the New Israel Fund Australia – places the recent turmoil in Israel and Palestine in the context of the all-too-familiar cycle of tension, violence, ...
ListenJames Boyce on Richard Flanagan's 'Toxic' from 2021-05-26T00:51
Richard Flanagan's new work, Toxic, is a startling exposé on Tasmania's salmon farming industry. From genetically altered 'frankenfish' to the use of dangerous chemicals to turn 'dead-grey flesh a ...
ListenKrissy Kneen in conversation with Beejay Silcox from 2021-05-19T01:53
Throughout her childhood, Krissy Kneen was surrounded by make-believe. At the centre of this enchanted world was her grandmother Lotty, whose prodigious fabulations not only kept her family in thra...
ListenJames Ley on Harold Bloom from 2021-05-12T01:37
Harold Bloom was one of the last of the so-called ‘Yale critics’, who shaped the terrain of literary criticism in the latter half of the twentieth century. Bloom died in October 2019, and his final...
ListenDavid Mason on 'African American Poetry', edited by Kevin Young from 2021-05-06T00:18
African American Poetry is an ambitious and wide-ranging collection of Black poetry. Edited by Kevin Young, a fellow poet and poetry editor of The New Yorker, the collection spans contemporary writ...
ListenZora Simic on 'Feminisms' by Lucy Delap from 2021-04-21T01:04
Written by award-winning historian Lucy Delap, Feminisms challenges the obfuscating binaries of the 'feminist waves'. Its main focus looks into aspects of feminism that have often been in conflict ...
ListenTim Byrne on Australian theatre after the pandemic from 2021-04-07T04:11:12
Over the past year the pandemic has devastated the performing arts in Australia. Theatre especially has been adversely impacted. In today’s episode, theatre critic and ABR regular Tim Byrne looks a...
ListenBeejay Silcox on Louise Milligan from 2021-03-31T03:02
In the wake of Brittany Higgins's startling allegations of sexual abuse in Parliament House, Beejay Silcox revisits her review of Witness by award-winning journalist Louise Milligan. Witness (recen...
ListenPatrick McCaughey on Cy Twombly from 2021-03-16T23:51:34
This week our subject is Cy Twombly, one of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century. A new major exhibition of his work, Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, organised by the MFA in Boston...
ListenAnne Rutherford on 'My Octopus Teacher' from 2021-03-09T23:22
This week we turn to My Octopus Teacher, a documentary that has proven controversial since its publication on Netflix in late 2020. As Anne Rutherford discusses in her luminous review, My Octopus T...
ListenBeejay Silcox on Kazuo Ishiguro from 2021-03-02T22:42
In 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his masterful novels, which, in the judges’ words, uncover 'the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world'. His ne...
ListenPeter Tregear on Australian Universities from 2021-02-17T01:08
Australian universities are doing it tough – hit hard by the pandemic, compelled to find new ways of teaching during lockdown, and confronted by a federal government ostensibly unsympathetic to muc...
ListenPaul Kildea on Musica Viva and Benjamin Britten from 2021-02-10T01:44
Paul Kildea is a man of many parts – author, musician, new artistic director of Musica Viva – and a regular contributor to ABR. In this week’s podcast, he talks to Peter Rose about the challenges o...
ListenNaama Grey-Smith on 'At the Edge of the Solid World' by Daniel Davis Wood from 2021-01-26T23:57
In today’s episode, Naama Grey-Smith reads her review of At the Edge of the Solid World, the second book of fiction by the Australian writer Daniel Davis Wood. The novel follows the breakdown of th...
ListenIn Conversation with Tim Byrne from 2021-01-19T23:19:42
In today's episode of the ABR Podcast Tim Byrne discusses his review of Mark Mordue's new biography of Nick Cave with ABR Digital Editor Jack Callil. Tim Byrne’s review of Boy on Fire appears in ...
ListenSamuel Watts on the assault on the US Capitol from 2021-01-13T00:17:43
The events of January 6 shocked the world. In this episode of the ABR Podcast Samuel Watts reads his article 'This Is America' and offers a historical perspective. As Watts notes, 'To view the assa...
ListenThe Porter Prize shortlisted poets read their poems from 2021-01-06T03:44
The Peter Porter Poetry Prize, now in its seventeenth year and worth a total of $10,000, attracted more than 1300 entries from 33 different countries this year. It’s our pleasure now to present the...
ListenJon Piccini on the Palace Letters from 2020-12-23T01:05
Earlier this year, the National Archives of Australia – after an epic legal battle – finally released the Palace Letters, a substantial cache of correspondence shedding light on the involvement of ...
ListenPeter McPhee on 'Napoleon and de Gaulle' by Patrice Gueniffey from 2020-12-16T00:26
Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle are two of the most polarising figures in French history. In today’s episode, Peter Rose talks to leading historian Peter McPhee about Patrice Gueniffey’s n...
ListenBooks of the Year with Beejay Silcox, Billy Griffiths and Peter Rose from 2020-12-09T04:34
In today's episode, Peter Rose talks to writers Beejay Silcox and Billy Griffiths about what they’ve been reading during this tumultuous year. They also speculate about some highlights of 2021. For...
ListenAmanda Laugesen on swearing and the art of the euphemism from 2020-12-01T23:39:27
Amanda Laugesen, historian and lexicographer, is director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre at the ANU. In her latest book, the evocatively titled Rooted, Amanda considers the bountiful ...
ListenIn conversation with Nicole Abadee about Sofie Laguna from 2020-11-24T23:55
In today's episode, Amy Baillieu speaks to Nicole Abadee about Sofie Laguna's latest novel, Infinite Splendours. In her November issue review, Abadee reflects that Laguna 'does not shy away from co...
ListenKate Crowcroft on Kylie Maslen's 'Show Me Where It Hurts' from 2020-11-18T01:52
Kylie Maslen's début essay collection, Show Me Where It Hurts, is an intimate exploration of living with chronic illness. Maslen describes her own experiences with the invisible illness she has liv...
ListenJoshua Black on Susan Ryan, a pioneering politician from 2020-11-11T00:30
In today's episode, Joshua Black reads his tribute to former Labor senator Susan Ryan, featured in our November issue. Ryan was a historic figure in Australian politics: she was the first woman fro...
ListenHessom Razavi on statelessness and Australia’s detention centres from 2020-11-04T00:16:43
In today's episode, Hessom Razavi – the ABR Behrouz Boochani Fellow – speaks to Peter Rose about his essay 'Failures of imagination: From Tehran’s prisons to Australia’s immigration detention centr...
ListenTony Hughes-d'Aeth on Australia's literary regionalism from 2020-10-27T22:14
Is it possible to parse Australian writers by states and territories? In today's episode, Tony Hughes-d'Aeth – Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia – speculates abo...
ListenTimothy J. Lynch on the paradox of Donald Trump from 2020-10-20T22:32:34
Whatever we might think of him, Donald Trump has proven to be one of the most transformative figures in recent history. In today's episode, Timothy J. Lynch talks to ABR Editor Peter Rose about thr...
ListenJohanna Leggatt on Twitter's threat to writers and journalists from 2020-10-13T23:02
Amid growing disquiet about ‘cancel culture’ and censorious voices on social media, Melbourne journalist Johanna Leggatt explores the threat Twitter poses to the work of writers and journalists. Be...
ListenMichael L. Ondaatje on black American voters and DonaldTrump from 2020-10-06T22:28
In this week’s ABR Podcast, Peter Rose speaks to Michael L. Ondaatje (Professor of History at the Australian Catholic University) about black American voters’ attitudes towards Donald Trump and the...
Listen'Egg Timer' by C.J. Garrow from 2020-09-23T03:57:23
This year's ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize was won by Mykaela Saunders for 'River Story', which Mykaela reads for another episode of the ABR Podcast. Placed second in the prize was C.J. Gar...
ListenIn conversation with James Bradley about David Mitchell's 'Utopia Avenue' from 2020-09-16T03:14:18
In today's episode, author and critic James Bradley speaks to ABR's digital editor Jack Callil about David Mitchell's latest novel, Utopia Avenue. Mitchell is perhaps best known for Cloud Atlas (20...
Listen'The Dolorimeter' by Kate Middleton from 2020-09-09T01:51
The Calibre Essay Prize, now in its fourteenth year, goes on producing some of the finest longform essays from around the world. This year we received about 600 entries from 29 different countries....
ListenPoets Abroad – Victoria from 2020-09-02T01:43
We continue our poetry podcasts with the first in a series of readings by poets living in a particular state. It complements in a way ABR’s old States of Poetry anthologies (all still available onl...
ListenRecession speak: Amanda Laugesen on the language of financial crises from 2020-08-26T02:28
Language has always been shaped by the times. In today's episode, Amanda Laugesen, Director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, reveals how the national vocabulary has been transformed by...
Listen'River Story' by Mykaela Saunders, winner of the 2020 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize from 2020-08-19T02:59:10
In today's episode, listen to Mykaela Saunders read the entirety of her remarkable 'River Story', which won this year's ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. Mykaela is a Koori writer, teacher, a...
ListenDeclan Fry on 'Fire Front: First Nations poetry and power today', edited by Alison Whittaker from 2020-08-13T03:25:10
Fire Front, edited by Gomeroi author and scholar Alison Whittaker, is an anthology of contemporary First Nations poetry. Featuring several eminent Australian writers – including Ellen van Neerven, ...
ListenPaul McDermott reviews 'Warhol' by Blake Gopnik from 2020-08-05T03:37
Andy Warhol, who died in 1987, remains one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. His works command stratospheric prices, yet many regard him as a huckster, vacuous and inflated....
ListenThe Porter Prize: Listen to all the past winners from 2020-07-22T02:13
The Peter Porter Poetry Prize is one of the world's leading prizes for an unpublished poem. It's named after one of Australia's finest poets, and a regular contributor to ABR. Now in its seventeent...
Listen‘The Forest at the Edge of Time’ by Ashley Hay from 2020-07-15T07:17:03
ABR has published an environment issue every year since 2014, with our next one appearing in October. This themed issue has transformed our coverage of sustainability, climate change and the enviro...
ListenUnsolicited smut: James Ley on 'The Trials of Portnoy' by Patrick Mullins from 2020-07-08T01:50:02
In today's episode, we present James Ley’s hilarious and deeply serious review of The Trials of Portnoy by Patrick Mullins. James channels the memorable prose of Philip Roth himself. Mullins’s book...
Listen'The Point-Blank Murder' by Sonja Dechian – Winner of the 2019 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize from 2020-07-01T03:02
It’s Jolley time again! In August we’ll name the winner of the 2020 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. It’s timely then to revisit last year’s winner: Sonja Dechian's poignant story 'The Point...
Listen'Ambassadors from Another Time' by Stephen Orr from 2020-06-24T00:46:32
Each year, ABR publishes an issue dedicated to sustainability, climate change, and the environment. In today’s episode, we look back on Stephen Orr’s Eucalypt Fellowship essay, which was the featur...
Listen'Contested breath: The ethics of assembly in an age of absurdity' by Sarah Walker from 2020-06-17T03:18:09
What's it like losing a parent amid a pandemic? How do we mourn and celebrate when Covid-19 has made all public gatherings problematic? In her highly personal essay 'Contested breath', Sarah Walker...
Listen'Reading the Mess Backwards' by Yves Rees, winner of the 2020 Calibre Essay Prize from 2020-06-10T01:26
The Calibre Essay Prize is one of the world's leading prizes for an original non-fiction essay. This year was the fourteenth time ABR has presented the prize, which is now worth a total of $7,500. ...
ListenGwen Harwood: A centenary birthday tribute from 2020-06-03T00:16
Gwen Harwood, who died in 1995, was born on 8 June 1920, in Brisbane, of course, which she loved dearly. Harwood seems increasingly to have been one of the finest poets Australia has ever produced....
Listen'Coronaspeak: Tracking language in a pandemic' by Amanda Laugesen from 2020-05-27T00:33
Lexicographers, not just newspapers and television, respond to disasters. Language is never fixed, never finished, never done. In recent months, language has been shaped by the coronavirus. In this...
Listen'On the Characterisation of Male Poets’ Mothers' by Lisa Gorton from 2020-05-20T00:06:31
Lisa Gorton began publishing in ABR in 2003. Since then she's given us several dozen review essays and poems. Lisa has published three poetry collections, most recently the acclaimed Empirical, a G...
Listen'Notes on a Pandemic' by Hessom Razavi from 2020-05-13T06:19:53
Hessom Razavi offers a powerful reflection on the current Covid-19 crisis. Dr Razavi, an ophthalmologist, reflects on his own clinical experiences and interviews with senior medicos (including Dr N...
ListenMore Poetry for Troubled Times from 2020-04-29T04:08
All literature, but poetry in particular for some of us, becomes more important during the pandemic. Last month, we invited a group of poets and critics to read favourite poems of theirs, from any ...
Listen'The Golden Age of Television?' by James McNamara from 2020-04-22T04:36
During the Covid-19 crisis, many of us are surfeiting on television drama from Netflix, Stan, and the rest of them. Back in 2015, we published James McNamara's Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship essa...
ListenSurviving the Pandemic: Robyn Archer on living in the time of Covid-19 from 2020-04-15T01:06
Peter Rose – before introducing this week’s ABR Podcast guest – updates readers on ABR’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Australia Council’s inexplicable decision not to fund ABR in 2021–...
Listen'Truganini' by Cassandra Pybus, reviewed by Billy Griffiths from 2020-04-07T23:21
The extraordinary life of Truganini, an Aboriginal woman known as the 'last Tasmanian', is explored in this turbulent history by Cassandra Pybus. An inspiring and haunting story, Truganini’s life s...
ListenJohanna Leggatt on the AAP closure from 2020-03-31T22:23
The imminent closure of Australian Associated Press, or AAP, has sounded alarm bells for many citizens and journalists already worried about the lack of media diversity in Australia. AAP has long p...
Listen'At Her Majesty's Pleasure: Sir John Kerr and the royal dismissal secrets' by Jenny Hocking from 2020-03-25T23:01
In 1975 the governor general, John Kerr, removed a democratically elected Labor government, amid great intrigue and subterfuge. The dismissal of the Whitlam government remains one of the blights on...
ListenPoetry for Troubled Times | Read by J.M. Coetzee, Robyn Archer, Sarah Holland-Batt, and many more from 2020-03-24T01:29
At this ominous time, as we all hunker down, hoping for a cure, perhaps only poetry offers true insight and consolation, if we lean on it, as we’ve always done in past crises. In this episode, 18 f...
Listen'Nah Doongh's Song' by Grace Karskens from 2020-03-17T23:14:12
‘Nah Doongh’s Song’, Grace Karskens's Calibre Prize-winning essay, examines the unusually long life of one of the first Aboriginal children who grew up in conquered land. Born around 1800, Nah Doon...
Listen'Salt Blood' by Michael Adams from 2020-03-11T05:01
Since 2007, the Calibre Essay Prize has generated many thousands of new essays. This year alone, we received about 600 entries from around the world. In this week's episode, we look back at one of ...
Listen‘"Because it’s your country": Bringing Back the Bones to West Arnhem Land', an essay by Martin Thomas from 2020-02-26T00:12
ABR’s Calibre Essay Prize is one of the world’s leading prizes for an original essay. When the 2020 Prize closed recently we had received nearly 600 entries – a record field. I’m judging them now w...
Listen'Season of reckoning', an essay by Tom Griffiths from 2020-02-26T00:08
After this calamitous summer – this 'season of reckoning', as he puts it – celebrated historian Tom Griffiths reflects on names given to bushfires – all those Black Sundays and Mondays, etc. – and ...
Listen'The Testaments' by Margaret Atwood, reviewed by Beejay Silcox from 2020-02-11T01:23
Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments – a coda to her celebrated novel The Handmaid’s Tale – was one of the most anticipated books of 2019, and it went on to share the Booker Prize. Reviews of the novel...
ListenHelen Garner's diaries, reviewed by Peter Rose from 2020-01-28T23:30
In our new episode, ABR Editor Peter Rose reviews Yellow Notebook, the first volume of the diaries by Helen Garner, a most anticipated book. Here, we delve into Garner's own private musings, the di...
ListenThe Peter Porter Poetry Prize: Shortlisted poets read their poems from 2020-01-15T01:31
In our new episode, the shortlisted poets for the 2020 Peter Porter Poetry Prize – Lachlan Brown, Claire G. Coleman, Ross Gillett, A. Frances Johnson, and Julie Manning – read their shortlisted poe...
Listen'The Resident', a new poem by Michael Hofmann from 2020-01-08T00:58:08
In our first episode, the poet Michael Hofmann reads his brilliant satire on Donal Dump (aka Donald Trump), and then delves into a discussion about its development and significance in the current a...
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