The ABR Podcast

This week on The ABR Podcast, Lisa Gorton reviews Tomorrow by Peter Goldsworthy. A poetic companion to Goldsworthy’s ‘expansive, thoughtful’ memoir The Cancer Finishing School, Tomorrow braids the everyday experience with the ironic, the meaningful, the terrifying: the poetry ‘charges familiar things with terror’, Gorton writes. But the strength of Goldsworthy’s poetry lies in the unexpected; in some images, Gorton points out, ‘lonely terror bends weirdly around to meet the companionship of old poems and dead friends’. Goldsworthy brings ‘a new voice’ to ‘the small hours, the long minutes’ of the insomniac’s night: ‘This time / it’s serious. // And more intimate./ A deeper kind // of itch.’ Lisa Gorton is a poet, novelist, and critic, and a former Poetry Editor of ABR. A Rhodes Scholar, she completed a Masters in Renaissance Literature and a Doctorate on John Donne at Oxford University, and was awarded the John Donne Society Award for Distinguished Publication in Donne Studies. Her first poetry collection, Press Release (2007), won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry. She has also been awarded the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize. Here is Lisa Gorton with ‘A deeper kind of itch: Poetry of the mirrored plate’, published in the July issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature Killian Quigley’s review of Plotting the Oceans: Stories of powerful maps and their makers by Sarah Hamylton. Hamylton’s sharp insights emerge from her deeply embodied knowledge of her environment, Quigley asserts. In an era where ‘drones, algorithms, and artificial intelligence are transforming how maps are made’, such ‘situated knowledge’ is increasingly valuable. While technological advancement is inevitable, Quigley urges a renewed ‘attention to the bodies that map – that sweat, are sunburnt and shark-nibbled’. ‘To be physically present in a place – and physically vulnerable to that place – is to know it in a way’ that remote technologies cannot. Killian Quigley is a teacher and senior researcher at the Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. He is the co-editor, with Margaret Cohen, of The Aesthetics of the Undersea, published in 2019. Here is Killian Quigley with ‘Vulnerable to place: Navigating deep blue history’, published in the June issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, we feature the runner-up in the 2026 Calibre Essay Prize, titled ‘Tumbleweed: How the West was Lost’, by Maria Takolander. Wide-ranging and delightfully digressive, Takolander’s encyclopaedic essay uses the modest tumbleweed as a lens through which to examine Western mythology, colonial violence, environmental crises, and Tsarist Russia, among much else. ‘The tumbleweed is a celebrity, albeit a minor one’, Takolander writes. Maria Takolander was the inaugural winner of the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize in 2010. She is the author of four poetry collections and a book of short stories. Her début novel, The End of Romance, will be published by Text Publishing in June. The Calibre Essay Prize, now in its twentieth year, is one of the world’s leading prizes for a new non-fiction essay. Here is Maria Takolander with ‘Tumbleweed: How the West was lost’, published in the June issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, we feature Carissa Chye’s essay on David Malouf, titled ‘One of our rarest gifts’. A retrospective piece on ABR’s rich, generative relationship with Malouf, Chye’s essay recalls how Malouf’s ‘work and presence animated the literary life of the journal’. Taking us through the ABR archive, Chye observes that ‘the enduring singularity of Malouf’s literary vision is traceable through the convergent ways critics responded to the same defining impulses in his work’. Across decades of literary dialogue and imaginative essaying,’ she writes, ‘Malouf’s work was gently pedagogic of a particular mode of careful reading’. Carissa Chye is the ABR Peter Rose Editorial Cadet. Here is Carissa Chye with ‘One of our rarest gifts’: David Malouf in the pages of Australian Book Review’, published in the June issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, we feature Marjon Mossammaparast’s essay, titled ‘When people ask me about the “situation” in Iran’. She traces the complicated relationship of diasporic Iranians to their vatan, ‘primarily the site of belonging and memory, akin to Country’. Listening to the scattered voices of her vatan – ‘political exiles, religious refugees, the imprisoned and the smuggled, emigrants, lapsed believers, patriots, atheists, the new generation’ – drifting through various communication apps, Mossammaparast captures what it means when people ask her about the ‘situation’ in Iran.  Marjon Mossammaparast’s latest volume of poetry And to Ecstasy, published by Upswell in 2022, was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Award in 2023. Her début collection, That Sight (Cordite, 2018), won the 2019 Mary Gilmore Award and was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. Mossammaparast was born in Abadan, Iran, in the year of the Islamic Revolution. Here is Marjon Mossammaparast with ‘When people ask me about the “situation” in Iran: Locating ourselves and each other through the voices of the vatan’, published in the June issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Katherine Wilson reviews ‘Fed Up: A chef’s adventures in food, farming and feminism’ by Lucy Ridge. Partially a memoir of Ridge’s disillusionment with a food industry that regards food as ‘little more than vehicles for profit’, the book also seeks to situate itself in conversation with feminist food scholarship. Its strengths, Wilson argues, are sensorial and experiential – vividly immersing the reader in the cultural details of bushfood foraging, for example – but Fed Up requires more exacting research and critical depth to truly trouble the field of studies it wishes to join. Ultimately, Ridge’s brand of feminism ‘narrows the scope for radical collective visions of change’, Wilson writes. Katherine Wilson is an award-winning writer, journalist, and former co-editor of Overland, whose work focuses on cultural and environmental sustainability. Her essays have appeared in Griffith Review, Meanjin, the Law Institute Journal, and Eureka Street. ‘One bad day: Meditations on commodified flesh’ by Katherine Wilson is published in the upcoming June issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Kevin Hart reviews Turning Away: The poetics of an ancient gesture by Benjamin Saltzman. Saltzman examines our instinct to ‘turn away, whenever we are faced with death, grief, helplessness, loss, and pain’. He traces the representation of this elemental human gesture from literary classics and ancient artwork to modern films, plays, and narratives. Hart notes that Saltzman’s book is ‘a study not only of aversion but of transformation’. But what is the ethical implication of turning away in a ‘world of violence, pain, and grief’? ‘This is more than flinching’, Hart writes, ‘it is a reaction of horror mixed with shame.’ Kevin Hart is the Jo Wright University Distinguished Professor at Duke Divinity School. His most recent poetry collections are Carnets, published in 2025 by Cascade Press, and Firefly, just published by Pitt St Poetry in Sydney. Here is Kevin Hart with ‘Too human: Shame, horror, aversion’, published in the May issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature Sahar Rabah’s winning essay from the 2026 Calibre Essay Prize, ‘Beyond reality and dreams’. The Calibre Essay Prize, now in its twentieth year, is one of the world’s leading prizes for an original essay in English. Rabah, who grew up in Gaza and left late last year, takes us behind the livestreamed mass destruction in Gaza to the ‘small, undeclared wars’ that are ‘not shown on television’. Moving between the speaker’s broken dreams, her nightmares, and her intimate, lived trauma, ‘Between reality and dreams’ bears powerful witness to the human cost of conflict in Gaza. Sahar Rabah writes poetry, essays, and short fiction in Arabic and English. Her poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, World Literature Today, LitHub, and The Markaz Review. Here is Sahar Rabah with ‘Beyond reality and dreams’, published in the May issue of ABR.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Jane Gleeson-White reviews Erin Vincent’s memoir Fourteen Ways of Looking. Vincent’s parents were killed suddenly in an accident when she was fourteen, and the number would go on to shape and govern the narrative of her new memoir. Commenting on the strikingly poetic form of Fourteen Ways of Looking, Gleeson-White notes that ‘the structure and arrangement of the text are key’, reflecting the fragmented nature of trauma. ‘This is narrative stripped to its barest bones,’ she writes, ‘more poem than memoir.’  Jane Gleeson-White is the author of four books, including Double Entry: How the merchants of Venice created modern finance, published in 2011, and its sequel, Six Capitals: Capitalism, climate change and accounting, published in 2014. Here is Jane Gleeson-White with ‘Again and again: More poem than memoir’, published in the May issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth reviews On Alexis Wright by Geordie Williamson. Hughes-d’Aeth notes that Williamson mounts a spirited defence of Alexis Wright against what he terms ‘Australian philistinism’, in which the reader expects literature to ‘tell us stuff, neatly and efficiently’. Instead, Williamson suggests, Wright compels readers to ‘suspend their assumptions around what literature is or should be’. Hughes-d’Aeth commends Williamson for opening up Wright’s work: ‘More than anything,’ he observes, ‘Williamson writes in a way that makes you want to read Alexis Wright’.  Tony Hughes-d’Aeth is the Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia and the Director of the Westerly Centre. He is the author of Like Nothing on this Earth: A literary history of the wheatbelt, published by the University of Western Australia Publishing, which won the Walter McRae Russell Prize for best work of Australian literary criticism in 2019. Here is Tony Hughes-d’Aeth with ‘Rethinking “on”: Sitting and listening to Wright’, published in the April issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature a commentary by Florence Honybun on a ‘distinct trend’ towards progressive legalism in the Australian High Court. While Australians often look to US legal institutions to gauge the health of democracy, Honybun identifies a quieter ‘changing of the guard’ at home, and with it, ‘a shift in the jurisprudence informing its decisions’. In a suite of recent migration cases, the Court curtailed executive power over stateless migrants, signalling a more liberal, humanitarian turn. As migration pressures intensify, Honybun argues, Australians must become more alert to the consequential role of Australia’s highest court.  Florence Honybun is a recent alumnus of Monash University and a former intern at ABR. She is currently a graduate at law at a national Australian law firm. Here is Florence Honybun with ‘Progressive legalism in Australia’s High Court: How migration, aliens, and punishment cases reveal a distinct trend’, published in the April issue of ABR.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature a special commentary by Dennis Altman on the new literary scams enabled by artificial intelligence. Altman recounts the multiple emails he has received from people ‘whose lives will not be complete if they are not given the opportunity to promote one of my books … to a global audience’. These emails are purportedly from authors as varied as Patrick Süskind and Annie Ernaux. Apparently, ‘geography places no limits on my potential fan base,’ Altman writes, ‘nor, I suspect, will mortality.’   Dennis Altman is a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University. His most recent book is Righting My World: Essays from the past half-century, published by Monash University Publishing in 2025. Here is Dennis Altman with ‘“May today sink peace into your soul”: New scams in the literary world’, published in the April issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Felicity Plunkett reviews Fear Less: Poetry in perilous times, by former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. In a cultural moment when language is often ‘weaponised to cultivate division and fear’, Smith proposes a more audacious alternative: to live otherwise, refusing to succumb to ‘hot takes and livid tirades’. Smith’s call for ‘urgent compassion’, Plunkett writes, positions poetry as a means of fostering ‘careful listening and mutual respect’. Poetry insists, Smith writes, that ‘your life must be as important to you as mine is to me’.  Felicity Plunkett is the ABR Poetry Editor and a poet and critic. Her latest work, A Kinder Sea, is published by the University of Queensland Press. Here is Felicity Plunkett with ‘Urgent compassion: Paying courageous attention’, published in the April issue of ABR.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, we feature a special commentary by Simon Tedeschi on writers’ festivals. At the level below headlines, writers’ festivals have in recent years undergone a more subtle but pernicious shift, he argues. Whereas they were once sites of complex dialogue and genuine exchange, now ‘both political and literary language ... functions to perform reassurance and calibration’. Tedeschi reflects on a broader ‘societal impatience with ambiguity’ and asks us to consider: ‘What specific cultural function is a writers’ festival intended to perform?’  Simon Tedeschi won the ABR Calibre Essay Prize for his essay ‘This Woman My Grandmother’, and he is the author of Fugitive (2022). Here is Simon Tedeschi with ‘“Suppose I am wrong?”: On writers’ festivals, reassurance, calibration, and risk’, published in the April issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Eleanor Spencer-Regan reflects on Melbourne poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s poetic career. Wallace-Crabbe made the poem ‘a space for thinking in public’, she writes. In his work, poetry is treated ‘less as statement than as real-time event: a site in which ideas are tried out rather than asserted’. His most enduring legacy, Spencer-Regan suggests, lies in the intellectual capaciousness of this approach: one that is ‘curious, plural, generous, and ever alert to contingency’.  Eleanor Spencer-Regan is an Honorary Senior Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne and the Principal of Janet-Clarke Hall, Australia’s first residential college for women. Here is Eleanor Spencer-Regan with ‘Thinking in public: The vulpine poetry of Chris Wallace-Crabbe’, published in the March issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Grace Roodenrys reviews they, a novel by Danish author Helle Helle. ‘The novel is a story of illness and loss but often reads as anything but,’ Roodenrys writes. There is no predominant meaning imposed on the narrative; much of its ontological poignancy stems from its small, quiet ironies. Roodenrys observes, ‘The mother is a woman who is rapidly dying. The daughter is a girl whose mother will soon be dead. Yet neither knows how to actually be these things’.  Grace Roodenrys is a writer and critic from Sydney. Her work has appeared in Meanjin, Cordite, Rabbit, The Saturday Paper, and elsewhere. Here is Grace Roodenrys with ‘Roads to roads: Bathos of the ordinary’, published in the March issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Joel Deane reviews Niki Savva’s Earthquake, an account of the 2025 Australian federal election and the role of political expediency in shaping a country. ‘Like payday loans,’ Deane writes, ‘the costs of short-term political decisions accumulate and compound’, demanding repayment. Joel Deane is a speechwriter, novelist, and poet. He has worked in newspapers, television, and politics in Australia and the United States. He is the co-author of Making Progress: How good policy happens, published in 2025 by Melbourne University Publishing. Here is Joel Deane with ‘Lemmings over a cliff: On political and publishing expediency’, published in the March issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, we feature Stephen Garton’s commentary ‘When universities mattered: Higher education in a country addicted to the plough’. ‘There was a time when Australian universities mattered. Should they again?’ asks President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and former University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor Stephen Garton in a feature assessing the state of knowledge production in Australia. As the government sets about creating a new body to oversee higher education, Garton says the conversation about education should extend beyond the question, ‘Are you job ready?’ Here is Stephen Garton with ‘When universities mattered: Higher education in a country addicted to the plough’, published in the March issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Mindy Gill reviews Dead and Alive, Zadie Smith’s latest essay collection. For Gill, Smith’s essays ‘have an uncanny habit of arriving precisely when the culture shifts’. Dead and Alive ranges across technology and digital surveillance, authorship and literature, and the erosion of public space, among other urgent concerns. Considered together, ‘these essays reveal continuities otherwise invisible when read in isolation: a set of preoccupations that cut across ostensibly tangential subjects’. Mindy Gill was ABR’s 2021 Rising Star. A poet, critic, and former editor-in-chief of Peril magazine, Gill is an Associate Lecturer of Creative Writing at Queensland University of Technology. She has won the Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award and the Tom Collins Poetry Prize. Her collection of poems, August Burns the Sky, was shortlisted for the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. Here is Mindy Gill with ‘Thought’s tempo: Essays that imagine otherwise’, published in the January-February issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Sara Webb investigates the heated debates and mind bending science of quantum physics. As Webb writes, the ‘universe exists on an unimaginable scale’, its physics strange but wondrous. Sara Webb is the inaugural ABR Science Fellow and an astrophysicist at Swinburne University of Technology. She is the author of The Little Book of Cosmic Catastrophes (2024), was made a Superstar of STEM in 2022, and was chosen as a Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 in Science & Healthcare in 2025. She specialises in AI-driven transient astronomy, applying machine learning to large-scale survey data to uncover fast cosmic events. Here is Sara Webb with ‘A truly probabilistic universe: One hundred years of heated debate and mind-bending physics’, published in the December 2025 issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature a special essay by Stuart Kells, titled ‘Less an author than a milieu: Reading Shakespeare in the New World’. Kells discusses the thorny question of the authorship of the First Folio. While some devoted Shakespeareans insist that the First Folio was authored by Shakespeare, Kells points to compelling evidence that Shakespeare was instead a ‘middle stage in a multi-step dramaturgical production process’. ‘Shakespeare is not a hoax,’ Kells observes, ‘but he is hoaxy.’ Stuart Kells is Enterprise Fellow at the Melbourne Institute, University of Melbourne, and an Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University’s College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce. He is the author of many books, including Shakespeare’s Library: Unlocking the greatest mystery in literature. Here is Stuart Kells with ‘Less an author than a milieu: Reading Shakespeare in the New World’, published in the December issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week’s ABR Podcast we feature the shortlist for the 2026 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. Now in its twenty-second year, the Porter Prize is one of the world’s leading competitions for a new poem in English. This year, our judges are Judith Bishop, ABR Poetry Editor Felicity Plunkett, and Anders Villani. The shortlisted poets are J Andros, Kirsten Krauth, Cheryl Leavy, Claire Potter, and Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet. The five shortlisted poems appear in the January/February 2026 issue of Australian Book Review, which is on sale now.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Stephen Long reviews Woodside vs the Planet: How a company captured a country by Marian Wilkinson and Extractive Capitalism: How commodities and cronyism drive the global economy by Laleh Khalili. Long describes the notion that Australia can maintain its current gas exports and save the planet as a delusion, one that is increasingly adopted by our political leaders. In fact, Woodside and the LNG industry at large have a business model, Long explains, that is ‘based on climate catastrophe’. Stephen Long is a journalist who specialises in investigative reporting, analysis, and commentary. He is a winner of the Walkley Award, the Citigroup Award for Economic and Financial Journalism, and the Commonwealth Media Award. Here is Stephen Long with ‘Carbon bomb: Business models based on climate catastrophe’, published in the December issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, James Curran reviews Turbulence: Australian foreign policy in the Trump era by Clinton Fernandes. Curran describes Turbulence as ‘an attempt to chart the coordinates of President Trump’s approach to the world’ and to explain how Australia, in ‘scrambling to remain relevant to Washington’, has become what Fernandes describes as a “US sentinel state”. James Curran is Professor of Modern History at Sydney University and foreign affairs columnist for the Australian Financial Review. His books include Australia's China Odyssey: From euphoria to fear (2022) and he recently delivered a prestigious Boyer lecture, titled ‘Trump’s Gift’. Here is James Curran with ‘Skewering AUKUS: A point-by-point account’, published in the December issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast, we feature a special essay by biographer Nadia Wheatley titled ‘Liars, inventors, embroiderers: Rewriting the life and myth of Charmian Clift’. ‘What does a biographer do’, Wheatley asks, ‘when she discovers she has something wrong?’ In Wheatley’s case, it was not something that just she had wrong, but something that her subject, Charmian Clift, also had very wrong about her mother, Amy Lila Currie. It was, in fact, a great big secret, the knowledge of which recasts the life of both Amy and Charmian, as Wheately explains. Nadia Wheatley is the author of The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift, which won The Age Non-fiction Book of the Year in 2001 and the Australian History Prize at the New South Wales Premier’s History Awards in 2002. She is also the editor of Sneaky Little Revolutions: Selected essays of Charmian Clift (2022) and Clift’s previously unpublished autobiographical novel, The End of the Morning (2024). Here is Nadia Wheatley with ‘Liars, inventors, embroiderers: Rewriting the life and myth of Charmain Clift’, published in the December issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast, Grace Roodenrys reviews KONTRA by Eunice Andrada, observing that the collection draws on a poetics of cultural excavation. As Roodenrys explains, Andrada retrieves and rewrites the ways that women’s bodies have been framed, worshipped, and fetishised. She goes on to say that ‘KONTRA must work to resist a number of powerful aesthetic schemes – traditions of writing and imagining women in which they wind up silent, grateful, holy, or dead.’ Grace Roodenrys is a writer and critic from Sydney. Her work has appeared in Meanjin, Cordite, Rabbit, The Saturday Paper, and elsewhere. Here is Grace Roodenrys with ‘Understand me now: Poetry which cuts into the work’, published in the November issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Jessica Whyte reviews A Philosophy of Shame: A revolutionary emotion by Frédéric Gros. Whyte applauds the attempt to ‘revolutionise how we think about shame’ and to consider shame not simply as a retrograde emotion but ‘a resource for political struggle’. But in Gros’ book, writes Whyte, there is ‘abstract quality’ to this discussion and, she says, the pressing question that is not answered by the book is ‘how shame could generate a response to today’s shameless violence’. Jessica Whyte is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of New South Wales and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Her third book, Shameless Inhumanity, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Here is Jessica Whyte with ‘For shame: Social value of an emotion’, published in the November issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Patrick Mullins reviews Hawke PM: The making of a legend by David Day. Approaching Day’s second volume of the Hawke biography, Mullins asks: ‘how much more can there be to say?’ And, in the end, he concludes that ‘without a new perspective and questions that could throw new light on Hawke, the facts marshalled are generally too dulled by over-familiarity to gleam’. Patrick Mullins is a winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the National Biography Award. Here is Patrick Mullins with ‘“Carte blanche from me”: Volume two in a PM biography’, published in the November issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Clare Corbould reviews The Shortest History of the United States of America by Don Watson. Corbould praises Watson’s ‘sharp observations’ and his ‘wry and knowing analysis’ but notes a ‘melancholic tone’ as he explores the United States’ slide ‘into populism and authoritarianism’. Historian Clare Corbould is Associate Head of School (Research) in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University. Here is Clare Corbould with ‘On so many levels: A sharp yet melancholic account’, published in the November issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast we feature Rachael Wenona Guy’s short story ‘Limerence’, which placed third in the 2025 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. ‘Limerence’ deftly interweaves artifice and realism, narrative ellipses and unsettling meditation to create an uncanny confession. It stages a teenage girl’s obsession around the image of the dead young explorer and sailor John Torrington and life in a conservative town in an island state. The staging is paced, powerful, and evocative. That this death obsession makes life almost bearable for the girl marks the trysts and autopsies of social alienation and colonial legacies. Rachael Wenona Guy creates writing, visual art, and performance. Her writing has appeared in numerous Australian and international journals and anthologies including Overland, Sleepers Almanac, Australian Poetry Journal, Australian Poetry Anthology, and most recently Raging Grace, an anthology of collaborative writing on disability. Walleah Press published her début poetry collection, The Hungry Air, in 2020. She is currently working on a new collection of experimental poetic memoir to be published in 2026. Here is ‘Limerence’, by Rachael Wenona Guy, published in the August issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature Kate Fullagar’s essay ‘Questions for Mai: Joshua Reynolds’s portrait and the memory of Empire’. Fullagar delves into the history behind Joshua Reynold’s famous portrait of Mai, the first Pacific Islander to visit Britain. She considers what she calls a ‘complicated enmeshment of art, money, and national memory’ and investigates the portrait’s place in the British Empire. Kate Fullagar is Professor of History at Australian Catholic University, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, and Vice President of the Australian Historical Association. Here is Kate Fullagar with ‘Questions for Mai: Joshua Reynolds’s portrait and the memory of Empire’, published in the October issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Judith Bishop reviews Empire of AI: Inside the reckless race for total domination by Karen Hao and The AI Con: How to fight Big Tech’s hype and create the future we want by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna. Bishop seeks to cut through what she sees as prevailing ‘AI doomer/boomer ideologies’, where artificial intelligence is something that will either save us, or kill us. Judith Bishop is the 2024-2026 Tracey Banivanua Mar Fellow at La Trobe University and is writing a book about AI and human data. Here is Judith Bishop with ‘AI will kill us/save us: Hype and harm in the new economic order’, published in the October issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast we feature Tracey Slaughter’s short story ‘Sediment’, which placed second in the 2025 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. ‘Sediment’ takes the form of twenty-seven brilliant points about living and loving in a female share house. It encompasses intense casual relationships and snarks at a landlord and his rotten portfolio. The story reflects on being young, poor, and wild, and is frenetically evocative of contemporary urban lives and their characteristic insecurity. The language is fresh while confronting and dismantling of conventions, offering an affront to widely accepted middle-class mores. Tracey Slaughter is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist from Aotearoa New Zealand. She was a previous runner up in the 2018 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and won the 2024 Calibre Essay Prize. With this short story, Slaughter becomes the first person to have placed in all three ABR prizes. Here is ‘Sediment’ by Tracey Slaughter, published in the August issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature Sean Scalmer’s commentary ‘Albanese’s “Australian Way”: The rise of “progressive patriotism” and its complex past’. Scalmer investigates Albanese’s definition of the ‘Australian Way’, which ‘served as a touchstone on the campaign trail’, and asks what this ethos represents for the Labor government, particularly in the context of Australia’s complex history of labour reform. Sean Scalmer is Professor of History at the University of Melbourne and his latest book is A Fair Day’s Work: The quest to win back time. Here is Sean Scalmer with ‘Albanese’s “Australian Way”: The rise of “progressive patriotism” and its complex past’, published in the October issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature ‘Deeper into darkness: Iran after the twelve-day war’. Australian journalist Zoe Holman writes on life in Iran after the recent twelve-day war, investigating whether conflict brought Iranians closer to democracy or further away from it. She speaks to Iranians in the diaspora, including a London-based academic from Tehran who withheld his name for security reasons, about his concerns around regime change through conflict. Many Iranians think ‘any regime is better than this one’, he reflects, ‘but we can always go deeper into darkness. I don’t want to replace a theocratic regime with a secular but proto-fascist one.’ Zoe Holman is a journalist, writer, and poet whose work has appeared in outlets including The Economist, the Guardian, London Review of Books, and Jacobin. She is the author of Where the Water Ends: Seeking refuge in Fortress Europe. Here is Zoe Holman with ‘Deeper into darkness: Iran after the twelve-day war’, published in the September issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature Nathan Hollier’s commentary ‘“Come nearer to Asia”: Australia’s place at Bandung, 1955’. Seventy years after the 1955 Asian-African Conference, Hollier reflects on Australia’s official absence from this historic ‘postcolonial moment’, as well as its unofficial presence. Hollier recalls the invitation of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to Australia, to ‘come closer to Asia’. ‘Seventy years on,’ he says, ‘Nehru’s invitation still calls to us, however faintly.’ Nathan Hollier is Manager of The Australian National University Press and co-editor of Profiles in courage: Political actors & ideas in contemporary Asia. Here he is with ‘“Come nearer to Asia”: Australia’s place at Bandung, 1955.’, published in the September issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The ABR Podcast we feature Tara Sharman’s short story ‘Shelling’, which won the 2025 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. In ‘Shelling’, we meet a woman in flight, driving with the corpse of her dead father stowed in the boot of her car. Stunningly written, savagely honest, this is a story about grief – the grief of losing a father, the grief of losing a childhood, the grief of having to live beyond a state of innocence. Tara Sharman, at twenty-two years old, becomes the youngest winner of an ABR prize. Here is ‘Shelling’ by Tara Sharman, published in the August issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast, we feature Clinton Fernandes’ commentary ‘“Without undue suffering”: Japan’s August 1945 and the superweapon alibi’. On the eightieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, historian Clinton Fernandes delivers a gripping reassessment of the world’s only use of atomic bombs against civilians and exposes the ‘superweapon alibi’ that enabled a politically convenient end to World War II for both the United States and Japan. Fernandes draws on Japanese archives referring to the bombs as ‘heaven sent’ and ‘gifts from the gods’, as well as US government reports that they were dropped ‘without undue suffering’. He argues that nuclear weapons facilitate new geopolitical realities – ones we should be cognisant of as Australia invests further in AUKUS. Here is Clinton Fernandes with ‘“Without undue suffering”: Japan’s August 1945 and the superweapon alibi’, published in the August issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast, Lynda Ng reviews To Save and To Destroy: Writing as an Other by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Nguyen, who arrived in the United States from Vietnam as a child refugee in 1975, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer. To Save and To Destroy is a collection of pieces Nguyen delivered for the prestigious Norton Lectures. Ng considers Nguyen’s primary subject – the category of otherness – and what ‘it means for such a significant part of the population to be continuously singled out and labelled as “other”’. Lynda Ng is a Lecturer in World Literature (including Australian Literature) at the University of Melbourne. She is the editor of Indigenous Transnationalism: Essays on Carpentaria (2018). Here is Lynda Ng with ‘Other Orientalisms: Refusing to be spectacle’, published in the August issue of ABR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast, Marilyn Lake reviews After America: Australia and the new world order by Emma Shortis and Hard New World: Our post-American future (Quarterly Essay 98) by Hugh White. Lake observes that both ‘authors argue that it is time to imagine a post-American world’ and emphasise ‘the necessity of retrieving our relationship with China’. Lake applauds these authors for their ‘specifically Australian perspective and vantage point’ and conclusion that ‘Australia find its security not from Asia but in Asia’. Marilyn Lake is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her most recent book is Progressive New World: How settler colonialism and TransPacific exchange shaped American reform (Harvard University Press, 2019). Here is Marilyn Lake with ‘Dogged pursuit: Australia’s “America first” policy’, published in the August issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast, Felicity Plunkett reviews new collections of Antigone Kefala’s poetry and fiction, observing that the belated recognition of this major Australian figure suggests that Kefala has moved beyond the designation ‘migrant writer’. ABR was this week delighted to announce that Felicity Plunkett is ABR’s new Poetry Editor. Her latest work, A Kinder Sea, is published by UQP. Listen to Felicity Plunkett with ‘Some undefined peace: Moving beyond “migrant writer”, published in the July issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast we feature James Curran’s commentary ‘Balance sheet blues: The pros and cons of Pax Americana coming to an end’. Curran’s focus is the evolving relationship between Australia and America during and beyond Trump’s second administration. James Curran is a Professor of Modern History at Sydney University and International Editor at The Australian Financial Review. Listen to James Curran’s commentary, published in the July issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast we feature Robin Boord’s essay ‘Consolation of Clouds’, which was placed third in the 2025 Calibre Essay Prize. The essay conveys the mystery surrounding the death of a woman’s father, a pilot in the Korean War, who died unexpectedly at home after a mechanical failure on a training flight. Boord writes in poetic prose that creates narrative movement through a gradual succession of images connected by the recurring motif of sliding, strange, penetrable clouds.  Robin Boord has worked as a theatre director and a psychologist. Her novel manuscript Out of Place was shortlisted for the Unpublished Manuscript Award in the 2024 South Australian Literary Awards. Here is Robin Boord with ‘Consolation of Clouds’, published in the July issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR podcast we feature Shan Windscript’s review of Bombard the Headquarters! by Linda Jaivin. Though Windscript applauds Jaivin for condensing the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of Communist China into a succinct and vivid account, Windscript argues this approach sacrifices historical nuance. Shan Windscript is a cultural historian of modern China and Lecturer in East Asian History at Monash University. Listen to Shan Windscript with ‘Mao’s mango: Cultural Revolution as history or farce’,published in the July issue of ABRSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast, we feature Rebecca Strating’s commentary ‘“Rejecting the system it created”: How Trump’s America is reshaping Australia’s regional relations’. While the second Trump administration presents a challenge for Australian policy makers, it also provides an opportunity for Australia, explains Strating, ‘to develop greater self-reliance in foreign policy and deepen relationships across Asia’. But what are leaders across Asia concerned about and how are they responding to the Trump administration? Strating provides a survey, noting that ‘most Southeast Asian nations have so far opted for hedging strategies that maintain relationships with multiple partners’. Rebecca Strating is Director of La Trobe Asia and was this year awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in recognition of her contributions to the fields of strategic defence and international relations. Her most recent book, Girt by Sea: Re-imagining Australia’s security, was published by Black Inc. in 2024. Here is Rebecca Strating with ‘“Rejecting the system it created”: How Trump’s America is reshaping Australia’s regional relations’, published in the June issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR podcast we feature André Dao’s review of The Shortest History of AI by Toby Walsh. In his analysis, Dao notes an undercurrent of ‘pervasive technological solutionism’ in Walsh’s ‘core history… of technological innovations’. André Dao is a PhD candidate at the Melbourne Law School and won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, among other prizes, for his debut novel Anam (2023). Listen to André Dao with ‘A Worse World: History from the future’, published in the June issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast we feature Natasha Sholl’s essay ‘The Chirp/The Scream’, which was the runner-up in the 2025 Calibre Essay Prize. Natasha Sholl is a writer and lapsed lawyer based in Melbourne. Her work has appeared in many publications including Australian Book Review. Her first book, Found, Wanting, was published by Ultimo Press in 2022. Her essay, ‘Hold Your Nerve’, was runner-up in the 2024 Calibre Essay Prize. Listen to Natasha Sholl with ‘The Chirp/The Scream’, published in the June issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast, Kate Fullagar reviews Uprising: War in the colony of New South Wales, 1838-1844, by Stephen Gapps. Fullagar writes that Uprising is a ‘crucial contribution to our rethinking of Australian military history’. Kate Fullagar is Professor of History at Australian Catholic University, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, and Vice President of the Australian Historical Association. Her most recent book is Bennelong & Phillip: A History Unravelled. Listen to Kate Fullagar with ‘Method and message: Rethinking Australian military history’, published in the June issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast we present Peter Rose’s final Diary as Editor of Australian Book Review. Peter began editing ABR in 2001 and retired just last month. The May issue was his final issue as Editor, and in his diary entry Rose recalls. Before coming to ABR, Rose was a publisher at Oxford University Press. He has published several books of poetry, an award-winning family memoir, Rose Boys, and two novels. His latest poetry collection is Attention, Please! published in February this year. As a critic, Rose has written for a variety of publications, including ABR. He also writes and performs short absurdist plays with The Highly Strung Players. Here is Peter Rose with his ‘Diary’, published in the May issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the ABR Podcast, we are delighted to present the winning essay in the 2025 Calibre Essay Prize: ‘Eucharist’ by Jeanette Mrozinski, who becomes the first American essayist to win the prestigious award. Jeanette Mrozinski has worked as a stripper and government bureaucrat, bakery girl and communications director, factory labourer, yoga instructor, and journalist. An MFA candidate in non-fiction at Washington University in St Louis, she writes about labour, class, and self-worth. Listen to Jeanette Mrozinski with ‘Eucharist’, published in the May issue of ABR.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.