Compulsive Reader talks

Esther Ottaway talks about and reads from her new book She Doesn't Seem Autistic. Through a number of poems, Esther talks about many of the key themes, rhythms, structures and concepts in the book, including masking, humour, her use of animals, on reclaiming clinical labels, the relationship between art and advocacy, and lots more.

Soil scientist Alisa Bryce reads from and talks about her book Grounded. In this conversation we cover such things as how the book came about, Alisa's deep love of soil and both how important it is to all aspects of our lives, but also how fun and interesting it is, the importance of broad-reaching science communication and its relationship to academia, soil and the microbiome, why we have only mapped 2% of the underground world, on the comfort of how “the human story in the soil ends about 5-19 metres down”, the many chapters that might make it into her next book, her inspiration, and lots more.

Alan Fyfe joins us to read from and talk about his latest novel T, which shortlisted for the T.A.G Hungerford Prize (Australia) and the Chaffinch Press Aware Prize (Ireland), and was recently was shortlisted in The WA Premier's Prize for an Emerging Writer.  Alan also reads from and discusses his debut collection, G-d, Sleep, and Chaos, forthcoming from Gazebo Books in 2024.

Ashley Kalagian Blunt joins us to read from and talk about her new thriller Dark Mode. We talk about such things as her research, the Dark Web, her protagonist Reagan Carson, her fabulous plant store setting Voodoo Lily and dark flowers, what she's reading now, her work-in-progress (hint it's another thriller), and lots more. 

In this wide-reading and humorous interview, Irish poet, academic and journalist Oisín Breen reads from and talks about his new poetry book Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín & Other Poems with Simon Whitby Brown. 

Meera Atkinson reads from her book Traumata and talks about her work, the ongoing relevance of Traumata, the difficulty and the necessity of the hybrid form,  on language, blood, the patriarchy, beauty and its commodification, the power of engagement with the past - personally and collectively, literature, poetry and much more.

One of the two editors of Voices of Freedom: Contemporary Writing From Ukraine reads from and talks about her new anthology.  Kateryna Kazimirova talks about the project and how it came together, how she chose the 27 authors, the importance of art in wartime, the many styles of the work, on translation and collaboration, her project Craft Magazine, and lots more. 

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.   

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, her vintage style, on living sustainably, and lots more. 

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 collaboration Fair Trade with January Rogers, and lots more. 

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 study, The Proofs, the Figures: Walt Whitman and the Meaning of Poems  investigates the chief methods available to readers when they embark on literary meaning-making, while also highlighting the challenges innate to such a task. With examples ranging from the critical and scholarly to the popular-cultural and survey-based, investigating interpretive prospects for “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” confirms that “to get at the meaning of poems” is a project of infinite opportunity both rewarded by and afflicted with the impossibility of absolute comprehension. By employing an array of formal, historical, mediational, and psychological techniques, Dr. Courtright confronts the lasting question of “what counts” or is relevant as evidence for an interpretation, while casting a wide net for the resources and methodologies that can be brought to bear not just on this single text or author, but on all texts and for all authors. Dr. Courtright’s book has already earned strong praise for its engaging prose and thought-provoking analysis.  Dr. Matt Cohen, Co-Director of the Walt Whitman Archive and author of The New Walt Whitman Studies (Cambridge UP), says, "The Proofs, the Figures has all of Nick Courtright's usual hallmarks: humor, trenchant readings, sustained skepticism, and a tactical leveraging of critical voices both old and new."   Similarly, Dr. Chad Bennett, author of Word of Mouth: Gossip and American Poetry  (Johns Hopkins UP) and Your New Feeling is the Artifact of a Bygone Era  (Sarabande), praises Courtright as a critic and thinker: "I appreciate, as always, Nick Courtright's lively and accessible writing, engagement with audience, and the ambition of this project. I'm impressed by how much ground he covers."

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. During the interview we talked about such things as the way she conveys interiority, about the mother-daughter relationship in her book and the philosophic tension between the way they see the world combined with the tenderness that exists between them, on elegy, perception, ekphrasis, memory, migration and many other key themes that this beautiful book encompasses.  

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:

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 2019 joanne burns Microlit Award. Her debut poetry collection, Come the Bones was published late last year as a Flying Island Pocket Book, and is the subject of today’s conversation.  KA reads a number of poems in the collection and talks about how the book came together as a collection, the relationship between the individual poems and the book, her current Sydney Observatory residency and much more.  

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 book and the power of the mother-tongue, and lots more. 

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. 

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 the real world, and lots more. 

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. 

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.  

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

In this wide-reaching and warm conversation, novelist and poet Jessica Mehta talks with novelist and poet Nina Murray, who reads some of her poems and talks about her latest poetry book Alcestis in the Underworld, the writing year in review, book titles, their relationship with Shakespeare, the appeal of the list poem and variety packs, on poetic themes, poetic sequencing and the critical importance of editing, on making sense of data, patterns and needs and how that relates to the poetic process, wishes for the new year/decade, writerly relationships, and lots more.

Multi-talented polymath Jenny Blackford reads from her new middle-grade novel The Girl in the Mirror and talks about her attraction to different genres, how the book came about, her attraction to sci-fi (and why she chose to entangle her protagonists), the book’s lovely illustrations (especially those redbacks), on her different fan streams, her large garden, her work-in-progress (and the name of the cat who will be in the book), and lots more!  

The author of The Wolf Hour reads from and talks about her latest novel, its origins and her research, her characters, writing about Uganda, the micro world of her family and the macro world of global politics, on sibling tension and bonds, her work in progress, and lots more.  

Eliana Gray reads from and talks about their new poetry book Eager to Break.  In this candid interview we talk about such things as writing about, through, and after trauma, on finding new forms of language, on writing about the body, on blurring and allowing for multitudes in pronouns, on self-acceptance, love, and healing, on eggs, and lots more.  

Richard James Allen reads from and talks about his new poetry book, The Short Story of You and I, exploring topics such as his book's themes and unique dialectical structure, the relationship between the poems and the reader, writing about love, the delicate motion between the metaphysical and the concrete, the relationship between poetry and quantum physics, complexity, the links between his many creativity practices, the relationship between the constructed self and character, and lots more. 

Bram Presser drops by to read from The Book of Dirt and we chat about many things including the Holocaust, the origins of his novel, the research he’s done, on the interplay between fact and fiction, the motif of dirt and his many golems, Czech folklore, his works in progress, and lots more.