The Readings Podcast Readings Books

In this episode, a conversation with Ouyang Yu, author, translator, academic, and renowned poet.

Ouyang Yu’s first collection of stories in English, The White Cockatoo Flowers, is both assured and tender and at times surprisingly funny. It includes stories set in China and Australia that revel in the truth and candour of lived experience and the joys and constraints of language. In this book Ouyang Yu deftly peels back the layers on what it means to move from one culture to another, and what it means to be a writer, a husband, a parent and a stranger on foreign and familiar ground.

Ouyang Yu was joined in conversation by Alice Pung, a writer and editor whose books include the memoirs Unpolished Gem, Her Father's Daughter, and the novel Laurinda.

In this episode, a conversation with Winnie Dunn – a Tongan-Australian writer, editor, the General Manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement, and now author of the novel Dirt Poor Islanders.

Dunn’s book is a potent, mesmerising novel that opens our eyes to the brutal fractures navigated when growing up between two cultures and the importance of understanding all the many pieces of yourself.

Winnie Dunn was joined in conversation at Readings Carlton by Evelyn Araluen, poet and literary editor. Araluen’s first book, Dropbear, won the 2022 Stella Prize.

In today’s episode, a conversation with Amanda Hampson, author of the runaway crime novel success, The Tea Ladies.

Hampson has returned with a sequel, The Cryptic Clue. It’s set in Zig Zag Lane, in the heart of Sydney's rag-trade district, where our intrepid tea ladies, Hazel, Betty and Irene, have their work cut out.

Solving a murder, kidnapping and arson case, and outwitting an arch criminal, earned them the respect of a local police officer. Now he needs their assistance to help solve a plot that threatens national security.

In this episode, a conversation with award-winning writer Steven Carroll, author of Death of a Foreign Gentleman, the first book in a series of post-war literary crime novels featuring Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter.

Set in Cambridge in 1947, the book is a playful, poignant and absorbing novel, with shades of The Third Man and Brighton Rock, which examines the question of how to live a meaningful life in an indifferent, random, post-God world.

A new instalment of the Readings Kids Podcast.

This episode features some of the members of the Readings Teen Advisory Board engaging in conversation with Tobias Madden, author of the books Anything But Fine and Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell. Madden’s third YA novel, Wrong Answers Only, was recently published in Australia.

In this episode, a conversation with Victoria Vanstone, author of the new memoir, A Thousand Wasted Sundays. The book follows her journey from casual teen drinking to black-outs, boozed-up play dates to learning to live without her reliable social crutch.

But it’s not a tale of misery and trauma, it’s the relatable story of a very normal woman with a very ordinary, socially acceptable drinking habit – and how therapy, and the support of her husband and friends eventually lead her to lasting sobriety and a new perspective on life.