The evening opens with poetry by Lebanese Australian multidisciplinary artist Charnel Rizk, whose work reflects on heritage, land, and survival. What follows is an expansive discussion tracing Felicity Castagna’s journey from early short story writing to award‑winning novels, teaching, and cross‑disciplinary creative work.

Together, Felicity and Sheila reflect on Australian literature, the decline of literary study in universities, and the changing role of reading communities outside academia. They explore the idea of “Western Sydney literature” — who it serves, where it falls short, and how writers can resist being pigeonholed while still honouring place and specificity.

The conversation also touches on class mobility, migrant identity, writing in dark political times, adaptation for stage and screen, and what it means to sustain a creative life over decades. Felicity shares insights into her upcoming novel Peaches, as well as her approach to teaching, collaboration, and staying creatively engaged beyond the book industry alone.

The event was hosted by writer Yumna Kassab.

The episode concludes with audience Q&A, considering creativity across disciplines, writing through rage and despair, and the value of slow, sustained artistic work.

This event was recorded at the Parramatta Literary Salon #4 on Wednesday 11 March, 2026, an Arts & Cultural Exchange, Parramatta event.

Voices

Felicity Castagna is a Sydney novelist, essayist, critic and teacher of creative writing. Her essays on books, art, suburbia, home and place are published both here and internationally on platforms such as The Sydney Review of Books, Electric Literature, LitHub, and ABC radio and television. When she’s not writing she spends most of her time talking about books and helping other people to write them. She’s taught everywhere from schools to festivals, art galleries and correctional centres and she has helped to establish, promote and run many writing and storytelling programs, particularly in Western Sydney. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing with The Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University.

Felicity has published four novels for adults and young adults including her most recent book, Girls In Boys’ Cars, which received The Victorian and Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and is on its way to becoming a film. She is also the author of No More Boats, a finalist in the 2018 Miles Franklin Literary Awards, and The Incredible Here and Now, which won a Prime Minister’s Literary Award. Her next book, Peaches, will be released in 2027.

Sheila Ngọc Phạm is an independent Sydney writer, producer and researcher. She writes for a wide range of Australian and international publications, and her work has been recognised with listings in the 2023 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, 2021 Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism and 2021 Woollahra Digital Literary Award. She has produced radio and podcasts for Monocle, ABC Radio National and SBS; worked on screen-based projects and series; and curated exhibitions for the State Library of NSW and Fairfield City Museum and Gallery. Sheila was the inaugural Imago Fellow at the State Library of NSW, examining Australian speculative fiction in the late 20th century, and is currently a researcher of refugee health at the University of Technology Sydney.

Charnel Rizk is a Lebanese Australian multidisciplinary artist working across poetry, music, performance, theatre, and writing. She is the co‑owner of Parramatta Artists Studios and founder of the creative platform All The Rizk. Her writing has been featured on SBS and has received international attention. Charnelle is also a practicing speech therapist and is passionate about storytelling, identity, and community‑focused creative collaboration.

Credits

Fully Lit is made on the Gadigal lands of the Eora nation.

Sevan Dermelkonian recorded this episode at the Parramatta Literary Salon #4 on Wednesday 11 March, 2026 and is an Arts & Cultural Exchange, Parramatta event.

Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

Producer: Regina Botros

Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang

Find more episodes of Fully Lit wherever you get your podcasts.

Antigone Kefala arrived in Australia from war-torn Europe and went on to reshape Australian literature with prose that was spare, luminous and unflinching. In this episode of Fully Lit Live, recorded at Gleebooks, writers, scholars and close friends reflect on her life, her exile and her modernism — and on the fierce clarity of a voice that refused to belong neatly anywhere.

For some of the speakers, Kefala was a literary influence. For others, she was a close friend — someone whose wit, irony and indomitable spirit they continue to miss deeply. Together, they consider her historical present, her multilingual musicality, and her lasting impact on Australian letters.

Antigone was a literary original.

Voices

Hosted by publisher and friend of Antigone, Ivor Indyk, the event brought together:

Mireille Juchau — award-winning novelist, essayist and critic, and Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney. Her novels include Machines for Feeling, Burning In, and The World Without Us, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. She wrote the introduction to Antigone Kefala: Collected Fiction.

Anna Couani — writer, visual artist and co-director of The Shop Gallery in Glebe. A long-time friend of Kefala, she has written and spoken extensively about her life and work.

Brigid Rooney — Professor of English at the University of New South Wales and co-editor (with Elizabeth McMahon) of Antigone Kefala: New Australian Modernities. Her biography of Shirley Hazzard was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Award for Non-Fiction.

Lauren Aimee Curtis — novelist and short story writer, author of Dolores and Strangers at the Port, longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and selected for Granta’s Best of Young Australian Novelists.

Nikos Papastergiadis - is the Director of the research unit in public cultures, and a Professor in the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne.

Alex Wells — Berlin-based writer and editor, literary editor of The Berliner, whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Paris Review and elsewhere. A long-time advocate for Kefala’s international readership.

Vrasidas Karalis — professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies at the University of Sydney, translator and scholar, and an early academic supporter of Kefala’s work.

Jim Provencher — poet and long-time friend of Kefala, who reflects on her craft, musicality and uncompromising standards.

Credits

Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros.

This episode was recorded at Gleebooks in Sydney - for more literary events see the Gleebooks events page.

Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang.

Edited and mixed by Regina Botros.

Find more episodes of Fully Lit wherever you get your podcasts.

Further reading

For those who can’t get enough of Kefala, we recommend Wells’ extended homage, ‘Alien Nation’, recently published in the Sydney Review of Books. Ranging across Kefala’s poetry and fiction, Wells argues for the lasting impact her writing left on Australian literature. Through its attunement to migrants’ sense of displacement, Kefala’s work brought new intensities of poetic vision as well as a heightened sensitivity to the alienating effects of time and language.

Both Anne and Nadia challenge the dominance of English in Australia by creating bold, multilingual poetry.

What does embracing multilingualism sound like?

How do these poets use language to disrupt, to heal, to remember, and to imagine a different, more ethical way of belonging in Australia?

This is the second episode in a new series called 'My Language, My Country' - the first series on a new UTS podcast called Change the Story. The series explores the Australian tradition of acknowledging Country, and how that tradition might be enriched by embracing the hundreds of languages spoken in Australia.

Guests

Esita Sogotubu hails from Fiji and is the Employability Manager at UTS Careers. Her traditional roots are in Vunuku, Moala, Lau with maternal links to Nayavu, Wainibuka, Tailevu. She is a former international student who has over 15 years experience as a career development practitioner.

Nadia Niaz is the author of The Djinn Hunters and the founding editor of the Australian Multilingual Writing Project. Her work explores multilingual creative expression, translation, ‘belonging’ and relationships with place. She is a Lecturer in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Melbourne.

Anne Casey is originally from the west of Ireland and now lives in Australia. She is the author of six poetry books. Her work is widely published and awarded internationally, ranking in The Irish Times’ Most Read. She has a PhD from UTS where she teaches creative writing.

Prankqueans are an ensemble of artists inspired by ancient Celtic mythology to celebrate all things female and Irish Australian.

Credits

This series was produced on the Lands of the Gadigal People, the Cammeraygal People, the Darug People, and the Guringai People.

Host: Elaine Laforteza

Producer: Masako Fukui

With the support of Jane Curtis, Sarah Gilbert of UTS Impact Studios

Tile artwork by Alexandra Morris.

This podcast was created by the UTS Multicultural Women’s Network and is part of the broader UTS Acknowledgment of Country in Our Languages project.

In The Transformations, Pippos sets a love story inside a newsroom on the brink of digital collapse. What happens to intimacy when the workplace becomes all-consuming? How do you hold onto care, or truth, in an institution built on speed?

Shirm’s Out of the Woods, shaped by her time observing war-crimes trials in the Hague, turns to the ethics of witnessing. How is atrocity translated into legal language? What does it mean to listen to testimony day after day? And who carries its weight?

From newsrooms to courtrooms, this is a sharp, humane discussion about work, power and the radical patience of long-form storytelling.

Fully Lit is produced by Impact Studios at the University of Technology Sydney.

Credits

Gretchen Shirm is the author of Having Cried Wolf, Where the Light Falls, The Crying Room and her latest, Out of the Woods. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the University of Queensland Fiction Award. Gretchen teaches in the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

Dr Andrew Pippos is a writer of fiction and narrative nonfiction. His first novel, LUCKY'S (Picador), was published in 2020 and shortlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin literary award. Transformations is published by Pan Macmillan. He teaches in the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

Dr Delia Falconer is the author of two novels (The Service of Clouds and The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers) and two works of nonfiction (Sydney and Signs and Wonders: Dispatches from a time of beauty and loss), which have been shortlisted for national and international awards across the categories of fiction, nonfiction, innovation, biography, history and research. She is the editor of three cohort-defining collections: The Best Australian Stories 2008, The Best Australian Stories 2009 and The Penguin Book of the Road. Delia's short stories and essays have been widely anthologised, including in the landmark Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and The Penguin Century of Australian Stories. She has received grants and residencies from the Australia Council, the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship, Varuna and Bundanon, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. Since 2010 Delia has specialised in writing and teaching creative nonfiction, and she is a senior Lecturer in the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

Series Producer: Regina Botros.

Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang

Fully Lit is an Impact Studios production, in collaboration with the Sydney Review of Books.

Mixed by Siobhan Moylan.

Moderated by SRB deputy editor Tiffany Tsao, the conversation brings together critics, editors and scholars to assess a year that placed unprecedented pressure on Australian arts and cultural institutions — and on the artists and writers who depend upon them.

Australia’s 2025 Venice Biennale entrants and Martu writer Karen Wyld, along with journalist Antionette Lattouf, all felt the impact of efforts to set the boundaries of acceptable expression.

What are the longer-term effects of these cultural eruptions? And with “social cohesion” high on the political agenda, how might the arts respond? What can the arts tell us about what makes a society cohere in the first place?

(Note that our panel took place before Adelaide Writers’ Week imploded, an event that suggests these questions remain urgent, and before the happy news that QUT had stepped up to rescue Meanjin.)

The discussion ranges over other important questions, including the role of government and universities as cultural funders, the potential impacts of AI on the arts, and the strain placed on literary journals and critics asked to defend culture while also keeping it alive.

Host

Tiffany Tsao is Deputy Editor of the Sydney Review of Books. She is a novelist, translator and critic whose work has appeared in major Australian and international publications. Alongside her editorial work at the SRB, she has published multiple novels and is widely recognised for her literary translations from Indonesian to English.

Guests

Daniel Browning is a Bundjalung and Kullilli writer, journalist and radio broadcaster, and Professor of Indigenous Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Sydney — a newly established leadership role within the School of Art, Communication and English. He is a former presenter of The Art Show and Arts in 30 on ABC Radio National.

Nicholas Croggan is an art historian and critic, and Public Programs Coordinator at the Power Institute at the University of Sydney. He completed his PhD in Art History at Columbia University, New York.

Roanna Gonsalves is editor of Southerly, Australia’s oldest literary journal, and a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at UNSW Sydney. She is the author of The Permanent Resident (UWAP), and her novel The Servants will be published in November 2026.

James Jiang is Editor of the Sydney Review of Books. Prior to joining the SRB, he was Assistant Editor at Griffith Reviewand Australian Book Review. He holds a PhD in Modernist Literature from the University of Cambridge and has taught in the English and Theatre Studies Program at the University of Melbourne.

Credits

Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros.

Executive Producer: Sarah Gilbert.

Mixed by Siobhan Moylan.

Find more episodes of Fully Lit wherever you get your podcasts.

James Jiang, editor of the Sydney Review of Books, hosts Willo Drummond and Hasib Hourani for an exploration of how poems work - in the body, on the page, and in your ears.

From a discussion of formative reading experiences to a shared close reading of Emma Lew’s Marshes, this conversation is an intimate encounter with poetry and its enduring value.

If you’re a devoted reader of poetry, or someone who is yet to approach it, this episode is for you.

GUESTS

Hasib Hourani is a Lebanese-Palestinian writer, editor, arts worker and educator. His debut book, rock flight, won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Mary Gilmore Award, and was shortlisted for the 2025 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry.

Willo Drummond is a poet and lecturer in creative writing. Her debut collection Moon Wrasse was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and commended in the Five Islands Poetry Prize for a First Book of Poetry.

James Jiang is a critic and scholar, and editor of the Sydney Review of Books.

CREDITS

Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros.

Executive Producer: Sarah Gilbert

Mixed by Siobhan Moylan

Critic Geordie Williamson is the author of the recent On Alexis Wright, part of Black Ink’s 'Writers on Writers' series. In this conversation with Ivor Indyk, Wright’s publisher and editor at Giramondo, we learn how to read Wright’s books on their own terms — with attention to rhythm, repetition, and scale rather than plot alone.

Moving through Carpentaria, The Swan Book, and Praiseworthy, the discussion centres on Wright’s idea of ‘all time’: a narrative field where ancestral, mythic, and present time coexist, and where people, animals, weather systems and spirits all speak.

What happens when we make space for Wright’s digressions and tonal shifts, and allow ourselves the time she demands?

GUESTS

Geordie Williamson has been chief literary critic of The Australian since 2008. He is publisher of the Picador imprint at Pan Macmillan, a former editor of Island Magazine and Best Australian Essays, and author of The Burning Library, a collection of essays on neglected figures from Australian literature. He lives in Hobart.

Ivor Indyk is the publisher of the Giramondo book imprint and Whitlam Chair in the Writing & Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney.

CREDITS

This episode is brought to you in partnership with our friends at Gleebooks. Head to the Gleebooks events page to discover more great literary events featuring some of Australia’s best and best known authors.

Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros.

Executive Producer, Sarah Gilbert. This episode was mixed by Siobhan Moylan.

Find more episodes of Fully Lit wherever you get your podcasts.

We explore what these debates reveal about contemporary writing’s tendency to blur authorial fact with fiction, and why questions of agency still matter today. The conversation is sparked by Michael Griffiths’ new book, The Death of the Author and Anticolonial Thought, and was recorded live at UTS’ Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges.

Guests

Michael Griffiths – Author of The Death of the Author and Anticolonial Thought, Michael is a scholar whose work explores intersections between literary theory and postcolonial studies.

Ben Etherington – Academic and writer with expertise in world literature and cultural theory.

Elizabeth McMahon – Scholar and author focusing on literature, identity, and critical theory.

Graham Akhurst – Academic and author whose work engages with Indigenous storytelling and creative practice.

Credits

This live event was recorded on Gadigal land, live, at UTS’ Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges on November 27.

The event was produced and recorded by Ben Etherington.

Fully Lit is an Impact Studios podcast, made in collaboration with the Sydney Review of Books.

Its producer is Regina Botros.

Executive producers are Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang.

Guests

Anne Casey

Anne Casey is an award-winning Irish-Australian poet and writer whose work spans themes of identity, heritage, and resilience. Her poetry has been widely published internationally and translated into multiple languages. Anne is known for her evocative style and fearless exploration of social and cultural issues.

Sarah Holland-Batt

Sarah Holland-Batt is an acclaimed Australian poet, critic, and academic. She is the newly appointed Professor and Head of Creative Writing at the University of Technology Sydney. Sarah is the author of several award-winning poetry collections and a leading voice in contemporary literature. Her work often interrogates memory, mortality, and the complexities of human experience, earning her recognition as one of Australia’s most influential literary figures.

The program, now in its second iteration, recognises the unique and vital work of writers as contributors to narratives of place – through storying, remembering histories, and shaping a creative vision for our shared future.

As the inaugural Laureate, Kassab has composed Parramatta: A Dictionary of Place and Memory. She writes in the introduction to her work: 'It was my idea that a dictionary could tell the story of a person (me) in connection with a place (Parramatta) with enough flexibility to take in detours, digressions, musings, and general quirkiness. I knew at the outset that the entries would be placed under titles and it would be fragmentary in spirit.' 

Extracts from the Parramatta Dictionary are free to read on the Sydney Review of Books website.

Author note:

Yumna Kassab is a Parramatta-based novelist and short fiction writer, a high school teacher, and a staunch supporter of the Western Sydney Wanderers. 

The Lovers (2023) was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, and the Victorian Premier’s Award for Fiction. She has also authored The House of Youssef  (2019), Australiana (2022), Politica (2024), and Theory of Everything (2025).

Guests

Host: Kate Fagan - Director of the Writing and Society Research Centre Western Sydney University

Interviewer: James Jiang - Editor at The Sydney Review of Books

Credits

Recording engineer Sevan Dermelkonian recorded this episode on the 30th October, 2025 at PHIVE, Active Wellness Studios, Parramatta.

Fully Lit is a collaboration between Impact Studios, UTS, and the Sydney Review of Books. Its producer is Regina Botros, and its executive producers are Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang.

Historical novelist Sienna Brown brings to life the story of Nellie Small, a trailblazing performer whose life challenged the boundaries of race, gender, and identity in early 20th-century Australia. You'll hear actor Zahra Newman as Nellie, and an interview with playwright Alana Valentina, for whom Nellie has been a rich source of writerly inspiration.

Head to History Lab and subscribe to hear all four episodes of this special series, Caribbean Echoes - and much more.

History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast, made in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Public History.

Voices

Alana Valentine is a librettist, playwright, and director who is an expert at working with real life subjects and stories, dramatizing them with respect. She has three plays on the NSW HSC Syllabus: Parramatta Girls, Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah, and Cyberbile. Her play, Letters to Lindy, has seen hundreds of amateur and school productions. Valentine is particularly distinguished in her skills as a co-collaborator, notably with Barbara and the Camp Dogs, which won the 2019 Helpmann Award for Best Musical and Best Original Score. She has chronicled her practice in Bowerbird and published the memoir Wed By The Wayside. 

Professor Cassandra Pybus FAHA specializes historical narratives about people who have been marginalized, forgotten or written out of history. An award-winning author she has published 13 books including Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia's First Black Settlers and the bestselling biography, Truganini. She has held research professorships at the University of Sydney, Georgetown University in Washington DC, the University of Texas and King's College London. She is descended from a colonist who received the largest free land grant on Truganini's traditional country of Bruny Island. 

Vanessa Cassin is Education Manager at Society of Australian Genealogists with extensive experience in providing training and assessment in the trustee industry, both as an in-house trainer for the NSW Trustee & Guardian and as an assessor for Western Sydney University the College’s Registered Training Organisation. Vanessa holds a Diploma in Family Historical Studies from the Society of Australian Genealogists and has been researching her own family history for over 20 years. 

Zahra Newman was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, and moved to Australia at age 14. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Newman has an extensive list of credits in theatre, television, and film. Her notable works include her performance as Nabalungi in the original Australian cast of The Book of Mormon, and her lead role in the play The Hate Race and in the film Long Story Short. She has received a Green Room Award, a Sydney Theatre Award, and multiple Helpmann Award nominations. Newman played all 23 characters in the Sydney Theatre Company’s recent one-person production of Dracula. 

Graeme Rhodes’ acting career spans over 30 years and includes numerous theatre, film, television and radio credits. Most recently he has been working as a writer and director for Forum theatre based Industrial safety programs. When he’s not acting he sings with a jazz trio and builds electronic noise making machines. 

Credits 

This series was produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eeora Nation and Burramatagal people of the Dharug nation. 

Narrator, writer, and producer: Sienna Brown 

Sound recordist, writer, and producer: Ben Etherington 

Supervising producer: Jane Curtis, UTS Impact Studios

Executive producer: Sarah Gilbert, UTS Impact Studios

Sound designer and engineer: John Jacobs 

Support

The research for this series was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia: Poetics and Decolonisation (DP220101256).

We are also grateful to the Writing and Society Research Centre and School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University for their generous support in the production of this series. 

More reading about Nellie Small

• Nellie Small on Wikipedia
• Nellie Small: the trailblazing, cross-dressing cabaret star who Australia forgot The Guardian Australia
• From the Archives: The great live music war of 1954 Sydney Morning Herald
• Zoe Coombs Marr on Queerstralia Sydney Morning Herald
• A letter to the editor about soup Sydney Morning Herald
• Send for Nellie in the 2024 Sydney Festival and article by Alana Valentine on the State Library of NSW website

Recorded as part of Parramatta’s Lit Festival and the Sydney Fringe Festival, the event features acclaimed poets Eunice Andrada (Kontra), Kate Fagan (Song in the Grass), Hasib Hourani (rock flight), Šime Knežević (In Your Dreams), and Suneeta Peres da Costa (The Prodigal). With host Giramondo Publisher Ivor Indyk, the poets share their work and reflect on its origins, themes, and provocations.

Eunice Andrada's first poetry collection, Flood Damages, won the Anne Elder Award and was a finalist for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Dame Mary Gilmore Award. Her second collection, TAKE CARE, was a finalist for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, Stella Prize, Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Her third volume, KONTRA, will be published in October 2025.

Kate Fagan is a writer, musician and scholar. Her book First Light was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and Age Book of the Year Award. Kate is an internationally esteemed songwriter, and is currently Director of the WSU Writing and Society Research Centre. Her most recent book is Song in the Grass.

Hasib Hourani is a Lebanese-Palestinian writer, editor, arts worker and educator. His work has been published in Meanjin, Overland, Australian Poetry and Cordite, among others. He is a 2020 recipient of The Wheeler Centre’s Next Chapter Scheme. His debut book is rock flight.

Šime Knežević is a poet and playwright from Sydney with Croatian heritage. His poems have been published widely in Australian and international literary journals. His first book-length poetry collection is In Your Dreams.

Suneeta Peres da Costa was born in Sydney and is of Goan heritage. She writes fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry. Her novella Saudade was shortlisted for the 2019 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Her first book of poetry, The Prodigal, was published in 2024.

Presented by Giramondo Publishing.

This event was recorded live on September 25, 2025.

Fully Lit is an Impact Studios podcast.

In conversation with fellow author Debra Adelaide, Jones reflects on the difference between a crime novel and a novel with a crime in it, and asks how a novel might bear witness to suffering, honouring rather than exploiting it.

Jones's work - always deeply visual, filled with images that linger in the mind's eye - invites listeners to consider how literature shapes our inner worlds. In this episode, she reminds us that we are made up of all we have read.

The Name of the Sister is Gail Jones' 11th novel, and it was published this year by Text.  

This episode is brought to you in partnership with our friends at Gleebooks. Head to the Gleebooks events page to discover more great literary events featuring some of Australia’s best and best known authors. 

Guests

Gail Jones is a celebrated and prolific Australian writer, as well as a researcher and academic.

Debra Adelaide is the author or editor of 17 books, including novels, nonfiction, and reference works.

Credits

Fully Lit is made by Impact Studios, a media production house based on Gadigal land at UTS, Sydney.

This episode was recorded at Sydney's Gleebooks, also on Gadigal land.

Fully Lit is made by producer Regina Botros and its executive producers are Sarah Gilbert of UTS Impact Studios, and James Jiang, editor of the Sydney Review of Books.

This episode was recorded live as part of the Parramatta Lit Festival, held within the Sydney Fringe Festival on 6 September 2025 at Western Sydney University – Parramatta City Campus.

Host: James Jiang — Editor, Sydney Review of Books

Panelists: Max Easton, Eda Gunaydin, Lucy Van

Recording Engineer: Sevan Dermelkonian

So we're bringing you a 2024 episode of 'Poetry Says,' wherein host Alice Allan reflects on Ben Etherington's 2015 essay 'The Poet Tasters' - a forensic and statistical critique of Australian poetry that brought Alice's career as a poetry reviewer to an abrupt stop.

What kind of critical culture do you get when most critics are also poets? And how can the reviewer not break out into a cold sweat when appraising the work of friends and colleagues?

Featuring

Alice Allan is a Melbourne writer and editor who brought her show, 'Poetry Says' to a close earlier this year, with its 300th episode.

Further reading and listening

Read 'The Poet Tasters', Ben Etherington's 2015 essay in the Sydney Review of Books,

Then read 'The Poet Eaters' - Alice Allan and James Jiang on poetry reviewing ten years after ‘The Poet Tasters.’

'Poetry Says' was published from 2016 to early 2025.

Credits

Regina Botros - producer

Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang - executive producers

Fully Lit is brought to you by UTS Impact Studios and the Sydney Review of Books.

Can a poet laureate bring poetry back in Australia, where it's long been an afterthought for cultural policymakers? How might such a person engage our politics? And can we (shall we?) build the infrastructure to support poetic careers—not just poetic moments?

And, most urgently, how long will it take before someone dubs the be-laureled bard Australia's Poet Lorikeet?

Further reading

For the written version of this address, see The Poet in the Public Arena by Sarah Holland-Batt, published in Sydney Review of Books.

To learn more about her work, visit Sarah Holland-Batt.

CREDITS

Fully Lit is brought to you by UTS Impact Studios, the Sydney Review of Books and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

Executive producers, Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang.

Producer Regina Botros.

It was a night of celebration, conversation, and creative sparks, as we launched the podcast with a vibrant discussion on the power of audio as a medium for literary criticism - one where the critique is embodied, voiced and felt, and built in conversation with one another and with you, our listeners, in mind.

Sophie Gee of the Secret Life of Books was there to host a conversation with Lynda Ng and Ben Etherington, then Delia Falconer, of the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, introduced our friendly crowd to Eda Gunaydin, the 2025 UTS-Copyright Agency writer in residence.

Then we ate cake!

Further reading

Eda Gunaydin is the author of Root and Branch (2022, New South), a collection of essays. You can read many of her published essays via her website.

You can find Eileen Chong's poem, 'We Speak of Flowers,' about launching a book here, thanks to Kill Your Darlings.

Credits

This live event was recorded by Simon Branthwaite, who also did sound design on this episode.

Fully Lit is an Impact Studios podcast, made in collaboration with the Sydney Review of Books.

Its producer is Regina Botros.

Executive producers are Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang.

We are republishing this episode from the Sydney Review of Books' very first podcast season, to mark this month's NAIDOC week celebrations.

* Please note that this episode contains names and references to deceased persons*

You can find Blackfulla Bookclub on Instagram @blackfulla_bookclub

Merinda Dutton is on Twitter and Instagram @min_dutton

Teela Reid is on Twitter and Instagram @teelareid

Fire Front: First Nations poetry And Power Today was curated by Alison Whittaker and published by UQP.

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggles for justice are ongoing. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands this digital platform reaches.

Fully Lit is brought to you by UTS Impact Studios, the Sydney Review of Books and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

The Miles Franklin Literary Award is Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, awarded each year to a novel of the highest literary merit that presents Australian life in any of its phases. 

This special episode of Fully Lit is presented by Copyright Agency Cultural Fund and Gleebooks, Sydney’s premier literary events program.

Head to Gleebooks' events page to discover more great literary events featuring some of Australia’s best and best known authors. 

Guests

Winnie Dunn is a Tongan-Australian writer from Mount Druitt. She is the general manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement. Her debut novel is Dirt Poor Islanders, published by Hachette. 

Julie Janson is a Burruberongal woman of the Darug Aboriginal nation NSW. She is a novelist, playwright, and poet. Her novel Compassion is published by Magabala Books. 

Her career as a playwright resulted in ten productions at various theatres including Belvoir and Sydney Opera House. As a poet she is co-recipient of the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize 2016 and winner of the Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2019. 

Her Indigenous crime novel Madukka the River Serpent was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2023. Benevolence, an Indigenous historical novel published by Magabala in 2020, and later published by Harper Collins in the USA and UK, was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award 2022 and the Voss Literary Prize. Her shortlisted novel Compassion is a sequel to Benevolence A gripping historical novel set in colonial NSW, charting resistance, survival, and legacy through the life of a Darug woman outlaw. 

Siang Lu is the author of Ghost Cities, published by University of Queensland Press.  

His first book The Whitewash won the ABIA Audiobook of the Year in 2023. Ghost Cities has been shortlisted for five literary awards, including the 2025 Russell Prize for Humour Writing, the VPLA John Clarke Humour Award, the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize and The University of Queensland Fiction Book Award and The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award at the Queensland Literary Awards. In 2023 Siang was named one of the Top 40 Under 40 Asian-Australians at the Asian-Australian Leadership Awards. 

Credits

Fully Lit is is a podcast by Impact Studios, a media production house based on Gadigal land at UTS, Sydney.

This episode was recorded at Gleebooks, at an event hosted by Sunil Badami.

Sound engineering by Simon Branthwaite.

Executive producer, Sarah Gilbert.

Alice Grundy is Managing Editor of Australia Institute Press and a Research Manager at The Australia Institute. She worked in book publishing for over a decade before researching a PhD on editing and publishing history, the first half of which was published as a minigraph by Cambridge University Press.  

Charle Malycon (Shh-arl, she//her) is an editor, writer and critic. She is a fulltime editor at one of Australia’s largest publishing houses and has poetry, monologues, short stories and literary reviews published in ABR, Meanjin, Overland, UTS Writers’ Anthology, UTS Central and Voices for Woman. She has an MA Creative Writing, a BA Communications and is a professional member of IPEd, APA and ASA. 

Jing Xuan Teo is a freelance marketer and co-founder of Amplify Bookstore, Australia's first antiracist bookstore specialising in books by BIPOC authors. Her focus is on strategic content creation, community building and supporting marginalised authors throughout the publishing process.  

Readings 

Author and bookseller Laura Elizabeth Woollett reading from her essay, ‘Paying to Play’, at the Sydney Review of Books. 

Credits

Fully Lit is presented by Anna Funder.

The podcast series is produced, edited and sound designed by Regina Botros.

Sound engineering by Simon Branthwaite.

Executive producers are James Jiang and Sarah Gilbert.

Fully Lit is a co-production between UTS Impact Studios and the Sydney Review of Books, with support from the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

To cite this episode:  

Impact Studios, Botros, R., Gilbert, S., & Jiang, J. (2025, May 15). Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, Ep 8, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15421502 

Alice Grundy is Managing Editor of Australia Institute Press and a Research Manager at The Australia Institute. She worked in book publishing for over a decade before researching a PhD on editing and publishing history, the first half of which was published as a minigraph by Cambridge University Press.  

Anita Heiss is an internationally published, award-winning author of 25 books across genres. She is a proud member of the Wiradyuri Nation of central NSW, an Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland. 

Her adult fiction includes Manhattan Dreaming, Paris Dreaming and Tiddas which she adapted for the stage. Her novel Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms was shortlisted for the QLD Literary Awards and longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Prize. Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Literary Prize for Indigenous Writing, was shortlisted for the 2021 HNSA ARA Historical Novel (Adult Category) and longlisted for the 2022 Stella Prize. 

In 2023, Anita released a children’s book Bidhi Galing (Big Rain) illustrated by Samantha Campbell, and became Publisher of her own imprint, Bundyi Publishing (Simon & Schuster). 

In 2024, she released the historical novel Dirrayawadha (Rise Up). 

Anita’s latest novel is Red Dust Running. 

Further reading  

‘Dhuuluu-Yala (To Talk Straight): Publishing Aboriginal Literature,’  

Dirrayawadha 

Don't Take Your Love To Town 

My Place 

'Just How White is the Book Industry?' 

'Unliterary History: Toni Morrison, The Black Book, and 'Real Black Publishing'

Credits

Fully Lit is presented by Anna Funder.

The podcast series is produced, edited and sound designed by Regina Botros.

Sound engineering by Simon Branthwaite.

Executive producers are James Jiang and Sarah Gilbert.

Fully Lit is a co-production between UTS Impact Studios and the Sydney Review of Books, with support from the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

To cite this episode:  

Impact Studios, Botros, R., Gilbert, S., & Jiang, J. (2025, May 15). Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, Ep 7, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15421502 

Lisa Gorton writes poetry, fiction and essays. Her awards include the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal, the Prime Minister's Prize for Fiction, the NSW Premier's People's Choice Award for Fiction, the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry, and the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. Lisa studied at the universities of Melbourne and Oxford, with a Masters in Renaissance Literature and a Doctorate on John Donne's poetry and prose. She has contributed poems to Izabela Pluta's artist's book Figures of Slippage and Oscillation (Perimeter Press) and to exhibitions such as This is a Poem at Buxton Contemporary Art Museum. Lisa's fifth and most recent poetry collection is the limited-edition chapbook Mirror Landscape (Life Before Man, 2024), written with the support of a Creative Australia BR Whiting residency in Rome. 

Bella Li is the author of Argosy (Vagabond Press, 2017), Lost Lake (Vagabond Press, 2018), and Theory of Colours (Vagabond Press, 2021). Her work has won the Victorian and NSW Premier's awards for poetry and an ABDA award for book design, and has featured in exhibitions, catalogues, and programs of the National Gallery of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Recent work can be found in HEAT, Debris Magazine, The Saturday Paper, and Australian Poetry Journal.  

Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh and Dutch heritage. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers’ Prize. They are the author of two poetry collections: Comfort Food, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize; and Throat, which won the Kenneth Slessor Prize, the Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Their latest book, Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction in 2024. 

Readings 

‘Argosy’ read by author, Bella Li 

‘Constitute’ read by author, Ellen van Neerven 

‘Personal Score’ excerpt read its author, Ellen van Neerven 

‘An American Lyric’ from Citizen, by Claudia Rankine, read by Bella Li 

‘Memory Lesson 3 - Afloat in the Wake’ from Archival-Poetics by Natalie Harkin, read by Ellen Van Neerven 

‘Miribilia’ read by its author, Lisa Gorton 

‘Varuna House’ by Lionel Fogarty, read by Bella Li 

Further reading  

‘The Poet in the Public Arena’, an essay in the Sydney Review of Books by Sarah Holland-Batt about an Australian Poet Laureate  

‘Disrupting the colonial archive’, an essay on Natalie Harkin by Nathan Sentence 

Credits

Fully Lit is presented by Anna Funder.

The podcast series is produced, edited and sound designed by Regina Botros.

Sound engineering by Simon Branthwaite.

Executive producers are James Jiang and Sarah Gilbert.

Fully Lit is a co-production between UTS Impact Studios and the Sydney Review of Books, with support from the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

To cite this episode:  

Impact Studios, Botros, R., Gilbert, S., & Jiang, J. (2025, May 15). Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, Ep 6, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15421502 

Lisa Gorton writes poetry, fiction and essays. Her awards include the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal, the Prime Minister's Prize for Fiction, the NSW Premier's People's Choice Award for Fiction, the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry, and the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. Lisa studied at the universities of Melbourne and Oxford, with a Masters in Renaissance Literature and a Doctorate on John Donne's poetry and prose. She has contributed poems to Izabela Pluta's artist's book Figures of Slippage and Oscillation (Perimeter Press) and to exhibitions such as This is a Poem at Buxton Contemporary Art Museum. Lisa's fifth and most recent poetry collection is the limited-edition chapbook Mirror Landscape (Life Before Man, 2024), written with the support of a Creative Australia BR Whiting residency in Rome. 

John Kinsella is the author of over forty books. His many awards include the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry, the John Bray Poetry Award, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Poetry and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for Poetry (three times). His latest books are the three volumes of his collected poems, The Ascension of Sheep (UWAP, 2022), Harsh Hakea (UWAP, 2023) and Spirals (UWAP, 2024), and the story collection Beam of Light (Transit Lounge, 2024). He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and Emeritus Professor of Literature and Environment at Curtin University, Western Australia. He lives on Ballardong Noongar land at ‘Jam Tree Gully’ in the Western Australian Wheatbelt. In 2007 he received the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry and in 2024 he was inducted into the Western Australian Writers Hall of Fame. 

Readings 

'Paradise Lost' by John Milton, excerpt read by John Kinsella 

'Bulldozer' read by its author, John Kinsella 

'Indexing' read by its author, John Kinsella 

Further reading: 

An essay by Sarah Holland-Batt about an Australian Poet Laureate  

John Kinsella’s thoughts about the same. 

Credits

Fully Lit is presented by Anna Funder.

The podcast series is produced, edited and sound designed by Regina Botros.

Sound engineering by Simon Branthwaite.

Executive producers are James Jiang and Sarah Gilbert.

Fully Lit is a co-production between UTS Impact Studios and the Sydney Review of Books, with support from the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

To cite this episode:  

Impact Studios, Botros, R., Gilbert, S., & Jiang, J. (2025, May 15). Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, Ep 5, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15421502 

The Secret Life of Books is made by Sophie Gee, an academic and a writer, and Jonty Claypole, broadcaster and producer.

Sophie and Jonty tell the story behind the story of the literary classics that everyone wants to read, feels they should read or has already read and loved.

They reveal the secret histories, hidden players and big ideas behind the great books.

They show how they came into being, why they matter, and how they changed the world.

And try to have a bit of fun along the way.

https://shows.acast.com/secret-life-of-books

Novelist Melanie Saward and critic Ben Etherington join writer and academic Graham Akhurst to dive into the complex world of reading, teaching, and evaluating First Nations writing.

From the classroom to the review page, they explore the responsibilities that come with critiquing Indigenous stories — and what’s at stake when they’re misread or misunderstood.

Plus, a powerful intervention from the archive by Alexis Wright.

Graham Akhurst is a Kokomini writer and the author of Borderland (UWAP). He is the Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges at UTS and a Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Australian Studies and Creative Writing. As a Fulbright Scholar, Graham took his love for writing to New York City, where he studied for an MFA in Fiction at Hunter College. He is a board member of Varuna: The National Writers’ House, and the Sydney Review of Books. He lives with his wife on Gadigal Country in Sydney and enjoys walking Centennial Park with a good audiobook. 

Melanie Saward is a Bigambul and Wakka Wakka woman, author, academic, and publishing all-rounder.  

Ben Etherington is Associate Professor in English at Western Sydney University. His current research, which is supported by an Australian Research Council grant, is on the poetics of anglophone Caribbean Creole verse between the abolition of slavery and decolonization. He is also collaborating with the Sydney-based Jamaican writer Sienna Brown on a podcast series about the history of Caribbean people in Australia. Ben has previously worked with Alexis Wright on feature on the Gangalidda activist and leader Clarence Walden and has been a regular contributor to the Sydney Review of Books, especially writing on criticism. 

Archival recordings  

Alexis Wright, recorded by Ben Etherington for his students. With thanks to Alexis Wright.  

Further reading 

Jeanine Leane’s essay, ‘Cultural Rigour’, from the Sydney Review of Books.  

Credits

Fully Lit is presented by Anna Funder.

The podcast series is produced, edited and sound designed by Regina Botros.

Sound engineering by Simon Branthwaite.

Executive producers are James Jiang and Sarah Gilbert.

Fully Lit is a co-production between UTS Impact Studios and the Sydney Review of Books, with support from the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

To cite this episode:  

Impact Studios, Botros, R., Gilbert, S., & Jiang, J. (2025, May 15). Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, Ep 4, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15421502

Wiradjuri poet and critic Jeanine Leane joins Graham Akhurst for a powerful conversation that turns the spotlight on the critics themselves. With sharp insight and deep cultural knowledge, Jeanine unpacks the idea of “cultural rigour” — and why it’s essential for anyone engaging with Black writing in Australia.

Whether you're a reader, reviewer, or writer, this episode challenges you to rethink what it means to read responsibly — and to listen deeply.

Graham Akhurst

Graham Akhurst is a Kokomini writer and the author of Borderland (UWAP). He is the Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges at UTS and a Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Australian Studies and Creative Writing. As a Fulbright Scholar, Graham took his love for writing to New York City, where he studied for an MFA in Fiction at Hunter College. He is a board member of Varuna: The National Writers’ House, and the Sydney Review of Books. He lives with his wife on Gadigal Country in Sydney and enjoys walking Centennial Park with a good audiobook. 

Jeanine Leane

Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, teacher and academic from southwest New South Wales. After a longer teaching career, she completed a doctorate in Australian literature and Aboriginal representation and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the Australian National University. She is the recipient of two Discovery Indigenous Awards through the Australian Research Council, ‘The David Unaipon Award: Shaping the literary and history of Aboriginal Writing in Australia’ (2014-2017) and; 'Indigenous Storytelling and the Living Archive of Aboriginal Knowledge' (2020 -2024).

Jeanine has published widely in the area of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness and creative non-fiction. Jeanine was the recipient of the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize, and she has won the Oodgeroo Noonucal Prize for Poetry twice (2017 & 2019). Her second volume of poetry, Walk Back Over was released in 2018 by Cordite Press. In 2020 Jeanine edited Guwayu – for all times – a First Nations collection commissioned by Red Room Poetry and published by Magabala Books.

Readings 

'The Past' read by its author, Oodgeroo Noonuccal 

'We Are Going' read by its author,  Oodgeroo Noonuccal 

'History' read by its author, Jeanine Leane 

Borderland, read by its author, Graham Ackhurst 

Carpentaria by Alexis Wright, read by Isaac Drandich (with thanks to Audible) 

Cultural Rigour, read by its author, Jeanine Leane and Shari Sebbens 

Further reading and listening

'We are Going' by Oodgeroo Noonuccal, held at the National Film and Sound Archive 

'Returning To Our Futures' by Jeanine Leane, in the Sydney Review of Books 

Credits

Fully Lit is presented by Anna Funder.

The podcast series is produced, edited and sound designed by Regina Botros.

Sound engineering by Simon Branthwaite.

Executive producers are James Jiang and Sarah Gilbert.

Fully Lit is a co-production between UTS Impact Studios and the Sydney Review of Books, with support from the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

To cite this episode, use Impact Studios, Gilbert, S., Jiang, J., & Botros, R. (2025, May 15). Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, Ep 3, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15421502 

And what remains of the idea of a national literature once we eschew nationalistic clichés of Aussieness?  

Writers Mykaela Saunders and Yumna Kassab join Lynda Ng to tackle these questions. 

With readings from Australian fiction that reveals a literature deeply engaged with the world and with writing beyond our shores.

Dr Mykaela Saunders

Dr Mykaela Saunders is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer, critic and editor. Mykaela’s debut speculative fiction collection ALWAYS WILL BE (UQP 2024) won the David Unaipon Award, was longlisted for The Stella Prize and was highly commended for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing.

Mykaela is the editor of THIS ALL COME BACK NOW (UQP 2022), the world’s first anthology of blackfella spec fic, which won an Aurealis Award, and was highly commended for the Small Press Network Book of The Year and the Booktopia Favourite Australian Book Award. Mykaela has won other prizes for fiction, poetry, life writing and research, including the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize and the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize. Mykaela is a postdoctoral research fellow at Macquarie University, working on the project LAYING DOWN THE LORE: a survey of First Nations speculative, visionary and imaginative fiction. 

Yumna Kassab

Yumna Kassab is a writer from Western Sydney. She is the author of The House of Youssef, Australiana, The Lovers and Politica.  Her latest book, The Theory of Everything, is available from Ultimo Press. 

Her books have been listed for a number of prizes including the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. She is the inaugural Parramatta Laureate in Literature. 

Dr Lynda Ng

Dr Lynda Ng is a Lecturer in World Literature (including Australian Literature) at The University of Melbourne. She is the editor of Indigenous Transnationalism: Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2018), and is the recipient of an ARC Discovery Grant for a collaborative project on J. M. Coetzee and the Margaret Church Memorial Prize for the best essay published in MFS: Modern Fiction Studies.

Her research frequently considers Australian literature within a transnational paradigm, touching on the intersection between economics and literature as well as the environmental humanities. She is currently completing a project on Chinese diasporic writing.

Readings

The Tree of Man by Patrick White, read by Humphrey Bower (with thanks to Audible) 

Plains of Promise by Alexis Wright, read by Sharni McDermott 

‘The Argentine Writer and Tradition’, essay by Jorge Luis Borges, read by Nicolas Pustilnick Colombres 

The Swan Book by Alexis Wright, read by Sharni McDermott 

‘Windows’, excerpt from a short story read by its author, Yumna Kassab  

‘Taking Our Time’, excerpt from a short story read by its author, Mykaela Saunders, from her collection Always Will Be 

Credits

Fully Lit is presented by Anna Funder.

The podcast series is produced, edited and sound designed by Regina Botros.

Sound engineering by Simon Branthwaite.

Executive producers are James Jiang and Sarah Gilbert.

Fully Lit is a co-production between UTS Impact Studios and the Sydney Review of Books, with support from the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

To cite this episode:  

Impact Studios, Botros, R., Gilbert, S., & Jiang, J. (2025, May 15). Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, Ep 2, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15421502 

Writer, critic and former diplomat Nick Jose joins Lynda Ng—Oz Lit scholar and literary critic—for a deep dive into the Australian novel and its shifting place in global literature.

Through powerful readings from literary giants like Patrick White, Peter Carey, Alexis Wright, and Christina Stead, we ask:

How has fiction shaped the idea of ‘Australia'?

How has that idea changed from the nineteenth to the twentieth century?

Nicolas Jose

Nicolas Jose is a novelist, essayist and playwright, whose thirteen books include the novels Paper Nautilus, Avenue of Eternal Peace (shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award), The Custodians (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize) and Original Face; two short story collections; a volume of essays, Chinese Whispers; and the memoir Black Sheep.

Dr Lynda Ng

Dr Lynda Ng is a Lecturer in World Literature (including Australian Literature) at The University of Melbourne. She is the editor of Indigenous Transnationalism: Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria(2018), and is the recipient of an ARC Discovery Grant for a collaborative project on J. M. Coetzee and the Margaret Church Memorial Prize for the best essay published in MFS: Modern Fiction Studies.

Her research frequently considers Australian literature within a transnational paradigm, touching on the intersection between economics and literature as well as the environmental humanities. She is currently completing a project on Chinese diasporic writing.

Readings 

An Australian Girl by Catherine Martin, read by Regina Botros 

For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke, read by Tug Dumbly 

The Tree of Man by Patrick White, read by Humphrey Bower (with thanks to Audible) 

The Middle Parts of Fortune by Frederic Manning, read by Glen Phillips 

For Love Alone by Christina Stead, read by Trisha Starrs 

Plains of Promise by Alexis Wright, read by Sharni McDermott 

Carpentaria by Alexis Wright, read by Isaac Drandich (with thanks to Audible) 

Oscar & Lucinda by Peter Carey, read by Steven Crossley (with thanks to Audible) 

Farewell My Orange by Iwaki Kei, read by James Jiang 

Voss by Patrick White, read by Humphrey Bower (with thanks to Audible) 

Further reading 

The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel, edited by David Carter 

Indigenous Transnationalism: Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria, edited by Lynda Ng 

The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, edited by Nicholas Jose 

Credits

Fully Lit is presented by Anna Funder.

The podcast series is produced, edited and sound designed by Regina Botros.

Sound engineering by Simon Branthwaite.

Executive producers are James Jiang and Sarah Gilbert.

Fully Lit is a co-production between UTS Impact Studios and the Sydney Review of Books, with support from the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

To cite this episode:  

Impact Studios, Botros, R., Gilbert, S., & Jiang, J. (2025, May 15). Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, Ep 1, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15421502 

Welcome, or welcome back, to the Sydney Review of Books podcast - now known as Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, presented by Anna Funder.

Over eight episodes, you'll hear from John Kinsella, Nicholas Jose, Jeanine Leane, Anita Heiss and other luminaries of Australian letters as they dissect the work of Alexis Wright, Peter Carey, Patrick White, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Christina Stead and many more.

Fully Lit is brought to you by the Sydney Review of Books, Impact Studios, and the UTS Writing and Publishing program. 

talk about the online community they’ve built around First Nations storytelling and discuss their experiences of reading Fire Front, an anthology of poetry and essays curated by Alison Whittaker. It’s about seeing, and hearing, and reading the world through powerful First Nations perspectives. Listen up.

* Please note that this episode contains names and references to deceased persons*

- - - -

You can find Blackfulla Bookclub on Instagram @blackfulla_bookclub

Merinda Dutton is on Twitter and  Instagram @min_dutton

Teela Reid is on Twitter and Instagram @teelareid

Fire Front: First Nations poetry And Power Today was curated by Alison Whittaker and published by UQP.

Visit sydneyreviewofbooks.com/podcast for show notes.

- - - -

Our website is sydneyreviewofbooks.com

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Find us on Twitter and Instagram @SydReviewBooks

Follow us on Facebook

- - - -

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggles for justice are ongoing. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands this digital platform reaches.

Support the SRB: https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/donate/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

- - - -

Pat’s website is patgrantart.com where you can order a copy of The Grot.

You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @patgrantart

Our producer is Allison Chan. Sound design and mixing by Elina Godwin.

Visit sydneyreviewofbooks.com/podcast for show notes.

- - - -

Our website is sydneyreviewofbooks.com

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Find us on Twitter and Instagram @SydReviewBooks

Follow us on Facebook

- - - -

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggles for justice are ongoing. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands this digital platform reaches.

Support the SRB: https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/donate/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

- - - -

Read Eileen’s essay ‘Climbing the Hill’ on the SRB website.

Eileen’s website is eileenchong.com.au

She’s on Twitter @eileenchongpoet

Our producer is Allison Chan. Sound design and mixing by Elina Godwin.

Visit sydneyreviewofbooks.com/podcast for show notes.

- - - -

Our website is sydneyreviewofbooks.com

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Find us on Twitter and Instagram @SydReviewBooks

Follow us on Facebook

- - - -

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggles for justice are ongoing. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands this digital platform reaches.

Support the SRB: https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/donate/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode Rawah Arja presents an essay on family life at her home in Punchbowl, Western Sydney.

- - - -

Read Rawah’s essay ‘An Introvert’s Guide to Surviving an Arab Family of Extroverts’ on the SRB website.

Find more of her work at her website: rawaharjaauthor.com

Follow her on Instagram @rawaharja

Our producer is Allison Chan. Sound design and mixing by Elina Godwin.

Visit sydneyreviewofbooks.com/podcast for show notes.

- - - -

Our website is sydneyreviewofbooks.com

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Find us on Twitter and Instagram @SydReviewBooks

Follow us on Facebook

- - - -

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggles for justice are ongoing. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands this digital platform reaches.

Support the SRB: https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/donate/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

But when novelist Laura Elizabeth Woollett was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, she was working in a call centre. The $80,000 prize would have utterly changed her life and bought her literally years of time to write. 

We’re suspicious of romantic notions about starving artists here at the SRB. We asked Andrew Brooks to talk to Laura about her essay ‘Award Rate’ and the complex relationship between writing, money, work, and prizes.

- - - -

Read Laura’s Writers at Work essay ‘Award Rate’ on the SRB website

Laura’s website is lauraelizabethwoollett.com
She’s on Instagram @lauraelizabethwoollett.

Andrew Brooks is one half of the critical art collective Snack Syndicate and part of the Rosa Press collective.

Our producer is Allison Chan. Sound design and mixing by Elina Godwin.

Visit sydneyreviewofbooks.com/podcast for show notes.

- - - -

Our website is sydneyreviewofbooks.com

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Find us on Twitter and Instagram @SydReviewBooks

Follow us on Facebook

- - - -

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggles for justice are ongoing. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands this digital platform reaches.

Support the SRB: https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/donate/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Each week we publish criticism and essays by Australia’s best writers on our website ­– and now we’ve got a podcast to match. It’s about what writers do to make books, essays and poems – and what they do to make a living.

We’re bringing you five episodes featuring some of our favourite local writers: 

• Teela Reid and Merinda Dutton from Blackfulla Book Club
• Pat Grant, author of the graphic novel, The Grot
• Eileen Chong, a poet with numerous collections to her name
• Rawah Arja, Author of the YA novel, The F Team
• And Andrew Brooks in conversation with fiction writer, Laura Elizabeth Woollett

Settle in for audio essays, conversations and documentary and make sure to subscribe to our feed.

Visit sydneyreviewofbooks.com/podcast for show notes, transcripts and more.

- - - -

Our website is sydneyreviewofbooks.com

Sign up to our weekly newsletter bit.ly/3lOFfpK

Find us on Twitter and Instagram @SydReviewBooks

Follow us on Facebook

- - - -

SRB Editor and podcast host: Catriona Menzies-Pike

Producer: Allison Chan

Production assistant: Alice Desmond

Sound design and mixing: Elina Godwin

The SRB is produced at the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University and this podcast was made possible by funding from the Create NSW Digitise Initiative.

- - - -

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggles for justice are ongoing. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands this digital platform reaches.

Support the SRB: https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/donate/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.