Lisa Gorton in conversation

Doireann Ní Ghríofa in conversation

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

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

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

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

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