Blackfulla Bookclub on Fire Front

On this episode Teela Reid and Merinda Dutton, the co-founders of Blackfulla Bookclub, 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 seei…

Pat Grant on getting The Grot to readers

In this episode, graphic novelist Pat Grant explains what happened during the seven years it took him to make his second book, The Grot. We’ll also hear about the challenge of getting hard copies of your own book in the midst of a global pandemic. - - - - Pat’s website is patgrantart.com where yo…

Climbing the Hill – poet Eileen Chong on writing and place

This episode of the SRB podcast is an audio essay: ‘Climbing the Hill’ by Eileen Chong. We are fascinated by the ways the places we live shape the poems, books and essays we write. When poet Eileen Chong was invited take up this theme she wrote an essay with roots in three places:  Singapore, where…

An Introvert’s Guide To Surviving An Arab Family of Extroverts

‘It’s not a document that anyone can see or get hold of, rather, it’s the way I’ve broken things down to guide me and my anxiety along. The extroverts are a loud, 25-strong Lebanese clan – all of us living in three houses side-by-side on the same street in Punchbowl, south western Sydney, roaming f…

Award Rate – Andrew Brooks and Laura Elizabeth Woollett on writing, money, work and prizes

In recent years there’s been a trend of writers publicly giving away prize money to charity or sharing it with other shortlisted writers. 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 ha…

Welcome to the Sydney Review of Books Podcast

Welcome to the Sydney Review of Books podcast, a show about Australian books and writers. 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 m…