In this episode, a conversation with Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection, an audacious and original novel-in-stories, following a cast of intricately linked characters as rejection throws their lives and relationships into chaos. Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the thorniest problems of modern life: sex, relationships, identity and the internet. We see a tryhard male feminist's passionate allyship turn to a furious and debilitating nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that his feminism isn't getting him laid; a young woman's unrequited crush spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of both her sense of self and her group chat; and witness a shy late bloomer's flailing efforts at a first relationship lead to a life-upending mistake. As these characters pop up in each other's dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways that our delusions can warp our desire for connection. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780008759414/rejection--tony-tulathimutte--2025--9780008759414

In this episode, a conversation with author Laura Bates, author of The New Age of Sexism. AI is here, bringing a seismic shift in the way our society operates. Might this mean a future reimagined on equitable terms for women and marginalised groups everywhere? Not unless we fight for it. At present, power remains largely in the hands of a few rich, white men. New AI-driven technologies, with misogyny baked into their design, are putting women in danger, their rights and safety sacrificed at the altar of profitability and reckless speed. In The New Age of Sexism, Sunday Times bestselling author and campaigner Laura Bates takes us deep into the heart of this rapidly evolving world. She explores the metaverse, confronts deepfake pornography, travels to cyber brothels, tests chatbots, and hears from schools in the grip of online sexual abuse, showing how our lives – from education to work, sex to entertainment – are being infiltrated by easily accessible technologies that are changing the way we live and love. What she finds is a wild west where existing forms of discrimination, inequality and harassment are being coded into the future we will all have little choice about living in – unless we seize this moment to demand change. Gripping, courageous and eye-opening, The New Age of Sexism exposes a phenomenon we can’t afford to ignore any longer. Our future is on the line. We need to act now, before it is too late.

In this episode, a conversation with author Sarah Housley, author of the new book, Designing Hope. When did we stop dreaming of a better future? What happened to the science fiction golden age of the 1950s, when futurism flourished as a discipline and drove innovation? As a society, we either struggle to imagine something good for the times to come, or we fail to picture any future at all. Our world is in polycrisis: we face climate breakdown, societal fracturing, governmental collapse, war, and rising inequality. The exciting outcomes we dreamed of, from the space race to wonder material plastic, have brought contingent problems of their own. We haven’t yet developed mainstream and accessible new narratives to replace these failures, and if you ask someone to imagine ‘the future’, they’ll probably still picture flying cars. Designing Hope resets expectations. Through the lens of four emerging futures, Sarah Housley shows us visions of hope that inspire action and critical thinking about how we’ll live in the decades to come.

In this episode, a conversation with poet Ender Başkan, author of a new book, Two Hundred Million Musketeers. In this work, Başkan explores the complexities of parenthood and family life, and anxieties about the future his children will grow up in. It maps the shifting trains of thought when one’s attention is drawn in many different directions – between child-rearing and house-keeping, domestic crises, the need to earn a living, and the responsibilities you have to the past as well as to the future, to your own parents and grandparents, as well as to your children.

This is a very special instalment of the podcast, as we have not one, not two nor three, but four interviews with four award winners – the 2025 winners of the four categories of The Reading Prize. First presented in 2014, The Readings Prize supports new and outstanding Australian voices across three separate categories of fiction: Children’s, Young Adult and New Australian Fiction. The Readings Prize is unique in the Australian literary landscape as it’s the only prize currently run by an independent bookshop and supporting emerging Australian voices. Winners of each category are awarded $5000 and the winner of the Gab Williams Prize, which is judged by the Readings Teen Advisory Board, wins $1000. To celebrate The Readings Prize in 2025 we have brought together short interviews with each of the winners and the respective Chair of Judges for your listening pleasure.

In this episode, a conversation with Bri Lee, the acclaimed and bestselling author of Eggshell Skull and The Work, and of a new novel, Seed. Mitchell is a brilliant biologist, committed to the environment and the growing global antinatalist movement. For one month each year he lives with his colleague Frances in a utopia of radical equality and scientific dedication in Antarctica. They are concluding the Anarctos Project: a seed vault in an isolated, secret location. It is a biodiversity insurance policy against humanity's devastating effects on the rapidly warming planet. But when their helicopter doesn't pick them up, and strange things begin to happen, their faith in science is suddenly not enough. Mitchell has been keeping big secrets - from Frances and from himself. The ice haunts him with memories of a devastating betrayal and questions of legacy and fairness crowd his mind. If they don't get back to McMurdo Station before the last flight home they face a long dark polar winter together. Alone. As the days get shorter, these two people of firm logic and reason begin finding fault lines in their perfect social experiment. Thrilling, original and almost unbearably suspenseful, Seed offers an uneasy glimpse into isolation, love and our worst fears.

In this episode, a conversation with Andrew Pippos, the author of Lucky’s, awarded the Readings Prize for Fiction, on his new, forthcoming book, The Transformations. In the fading glow of Australia's print journalism era, The National is more than a newspaper: it's an institution, and the only place that George Desoulis has ever felt at home. A world-weary subeditor with a bookish sensibility and a painful past, George is one of nature's loners. But a late-night encounter with an unorthodox and self-assured reporter, Cassandra Gwan, begins to unravel both of their carefully managed worlds. As the decline of the newspaper enters a desperate stage, George and Cassandra struggle to balance their turbulent relationship with their responsibilities to family, and the compromises each has built their life upon. With a deft wit and a sharp eye for emotional complexity, Pippos examines the stories we tell ourselves, and the ways people handle grief, guilt and generational change. The Transformations is a novel about endings – of dreams, relationships, institutions – and the chance of new beginnings.

In this episode, a recording taken from the launch of Monica Raszewski's Crimson Light Polished Wood. Leonora, a British teacher, has relocated to Melbourne and falls in love with Margaret, a fellow female teacher who three years later dies of cancer. While still grieving for Margaret, Leonora meets and befriends Anna, the Polish woman who lives next door. As Leonora becomes increasingly involved with Anna and her family the novel illuminates with subtle ease the influence Leonora has on Anna's daughter, Lydia, introducing her to the wonderful world of literature and art. This is a novel about the ways we all long for acceptance and the ways in which those we might feel most in touch with including parents, siblings and mentors can often have different values and views about us. As such it is a beautiful work about art, gender, disappointment, understanding and celebration.

In today’s episode, a conversation with a longtime Readings favourite, Toni Jordan, about her most recent book, Tenderfoot. The story is set in Brisbane, 1975: Andie Tanner's world is small but whole. Her mum is complicated, but she adores her dad and the kennel of racing greyhounds that live under their house. Andie is a serious girl with plans: finish school with her friends, then apprentice to her father until she can become a greyhound trainer, with dogs of her very own. But real life rarely goes to plan, and the world is bigger and more complicated than Andie could imagine. When she loses everything she cares about – her family, her friends, the dogs – it's up to Andie to reclaim her future. She will need all her wits to survive this new reality of secrets and half-truths, addictions and crime.

In today’s episode, a conversation with respected journalist and acclaimed novelist Paul Daley, author of a new book, The Leap. The Leap is an outback town fuelled by fear, churning with corruption, prejudice and misogyny – and blighted by its inescapable history of frontier violence. Into this nightmarish morass falters traumatised British diplomat, Benedict Fotheringham-Gaskill. He’s on his first Australian mission, one seemingly straightforward enough – until he arrives in The Leap to battle a town conspiring against him.

In today’s episode, a conversation with Rhett Davis, author of a new novel, Arborescence. Bren works for an obscure company with colleagues he's never met, and who might not be real. His partner, Caelyn, is looking for something more but isn't sure what. The only thing she knows for certain is that humans are breaking the world and she's powerless to do anything about it.  Arborescence is a compelling, deeply moving novel about connection and disconnection, ambition and apathy, loss and hope, and how we don't always know what we have until the damage is done.

In today’s episode, a conversation with writer, podcaster and academic Amy Lovat, author of the new novel, Big Feelings, a neurotic, anti-romantic comedy for fans of Fleabag and High Fidelity. Our protagonist Sadie Thomas is obsessed with love stories, and whether hers stacks up – for the perfect love story is all Sadie has ever wanted. Her parents' story is what rom-com dreams are made of. But, so far, no one has offered the Happily Ever After that Sadie is searching for. In meeting the charismatic Chase, Sadie is ready for her sail-off-into-the-sunset, credits-roll happy ending. But being a self-saboteur, Sadie is left to ponder the mess of how life and love went so wrong.

In this episode, a conversation with writer Samantha Byres, author of the new novel, Dead Ends. All-round chaos merchant Nell Jenkins has returned to her small hometown to fulfil family duties for the mother and brother she's barely seen since making her escape as a teen. But her homecoming isn't the triumph it should be. She has nothing to show for her time in Sydney but a string of failed relationships, crappy jobs and an ongoing HR complaint against her ex-girlfriend, now former boss. Settling right back into old habits, Nell finds herself sparking a relationship with her dead best friend's brother Mick, as well as the newly arrived and equally unreliable Katya, who is working for the once-famous TV psychic Petronella Bush. Driven by her lust for Katya, an empty bank account and the need to come to terms with two life-defining deaths from her past, Nell is drawn deeper into Petronella's charismatic web. Dead Ends is a beguiling, big-hearted portrait of love and loss, and the bad decisions we make in their wake.

In this episode, a conversation with Mikayla Bridge, author of the Young Adult Fantasy Novel, Of Flame and Fury. The book focuses on Phoenix racing: exciting, profitable, deadly. No one knows this better than Kel Varra and her crew, the Crimson Howlers. They live on the edge of survival. When a mysterious tech billionaire offers them a place at his training facility, it gives them hope but also forces Kel to team up with Coup, her arrogant, infuriating rival. Embroiled in political scheming, volatile phoenix magic and a smouldering romance, Kel and Coup discover a conspiracy that threatens them all.

In this episode, writer and broadcaster Steve Vizard in conversation with Michael Veitch about Vizard’s new book, Nation, Memory, Myth. Vizard brings an original perspective to the foundational myth of Gallipoli as a sacred bearer of Australian national values and identity. In this scrupulously researched close reading of the Gallipoli mythology, Vizard dissects the elements common to all national myths that transform them into compelling symbolic performances of cultural memory and kinship, unpicking the tensions and explaining the ambiguities embodied within.

In this episode, a conversation with author Jennifer Mills, author of Salvage, a work of suspenseful, deeply human literary speculative fiction, in which two estranged sisters reconnect in the aftermath of ecological and social collapse. Jude's life has been about survival. She works on rebuilding - fixes roofs, trucks supplies, transports refugees. Tries to stay free from attachments and obligations. But Jude won't talk about her past. Or her sister Celeste, lost in the tragic failure of a space station that was supposed to save her, and the other ultra-rich, from the wreckage of a dying world. When an escape pod falls from the sky, its passenger near death, Jude knows her anonymous existence can't continue. As the fragile peace of her community is put at risk, Jude must re-examine the terms of her survival - and her exile. Salvage is a gripping novel of literary speculative fiction that asks: what does it mean to care for each other, after the end of the world?

In this episode, a conversation with screenwriter and actor Miranda Nation, author of New Skin, a powerful debut about first love and second chances from a stunning new voice in Australian fiction. Alex and Leah meet at medical school and form an immediate and intense connection. Over the course of four years, they are caught in the push-pull of passion and betrayal, longing and reunion. Neither can quite give up the relationship, even as they question whether they are good for each other. Years later, when Alex and Leah are drawn together once more, will they make the right choice? New Skin evokes a coming of age in the 1990s and charts the course of first love and its power to shape who we become.

In this episode, a recording taken from the Melbourne launch of the novel Pissants, by Brandon Jack – former Sydney Swans football player. In Pissants, the embittered fringe players of an unnamed football club follow rules of their own. Fangs, Stick, Squidman and Shaggers speak in a cryptic code of inside jokes and WhatsApp exchanges, chained to each other by their place on the outskirts of the team. Together, these characters present a jaw-dropping snapshot of life within the chaotic world of a professional sports club. The psychotic rituals. The dementing cliches. The adulation. The pressure. The broken staff. The despair. The life-saving friendships. The flatlining sexual encounters. The towering egos.

In this episode, a conversation with writer Sophie Quick, author of the new book, The Confidence Woman. Christina is a single mother living in the Melbourne suburbs, but to her online clients she is the esteemed Dr Ruth Carlisle, an 'executive coach and mindset expert, specialising in high-performing individuals’. Dr Ruth gains her clients' trust through her coaching business, discovering their secrets and deepest fears. Through this elaborate scam, she's saving money for the ultimate unobtainable Australian dream: a home deposit. But when she blunders, and her worlds begin to collide, suddenly everything is at stake. The Confidence Woman is a novel about more than one kind of confidence game. It explores and hilariously skewers contemporary cults of self-optimisation, while also creating a moving and too-real portrait of what it's like to strive for success (or just security) in a rigged system.

In this episode, a special conversation with Tania Davidge, Executive Director and Chief Curator with Open House Melbourne. Across Melbourne, every building, street and public place tells a unique story. Shaped by its transformation over time and the diverse communities that live here, the city is more than its bricks and mortar - the city is about people and place. The stories of our city are embedded in its urban landscapes and the people who live, work and play here. The much-loved Open House Weekend sees tens of thousands of people come out to celebrate architecture and the city, and this year, Readings is partnering with the organisation. To tell us more about the weekend and what is in store, Davidge was joined in conversation by Chris Gordon, the Readings Community Engagement and Programming Manager.