‘Fact and fiction: A story of two legendary women’ by Nadia Wheatley

This week on The ABR Podcast, Nadia Wheatley reviews Sisters in Arms by Sarah Cochrane Ridout, the ‘powerful’ story of two Australian women who worked tirelessly to campaign for constitutional change in the 1967 referendum: Kath Walker, who later changed her name to Oodgeroo Noonuccal, and Kathie C…

‘Sphinx and her double: A Woolfian celebration of the moment’ by Anthony Macris

This week on The ABR Podcast, Anthony Macris reviews Rachel Cusk’s fictional autobiography, Life of M, finding it ‘particularly strange and compelling’. Interrogating the uncomfortable relationship between selfhood and celebrity, Cusk’s novel questions how human identity ‘warps and buckles under pr…

‘To kill the pig: Politics that misses the moment’ by Emma Dawson

This week on The ABR Podcast, Emma Dawson surveys Bernard Keane’s Seize the Moment, in which Keane grapples with the 2025 Australian federal election result. Australia handed the Albanese government a huge majority in that election and, Dawson writes, ‘disproved the assumptions that have underpinne…

‘Fierce ground: Laying down songline’ by Cheryl Leavy

This week on The ABR Podcast, Cheryl Leavy reviews Julie Janson’s ‘unsettling and powerful’ poetry collection, My Kaathi Sister, calling it a brand of truth-telling that is ‘embodied, tactile, and troubling’, but ‘never performative’. Janson’s work positions the reader as ‘outcry witness’, Leavy wr…

‘“He lives eternally who lives in the present”: On lost sonnets and wandering through paradise with Gwen Harwood’ by Peter Goldsworthy

This week on The ABR Podcast, Peter Goldsworthy shares a poignant account of writing sonnets by a Brisbane poolside in 1987 with the late poet Gwen Harwood and author Vikram Seth. One of Australia’s greatest poets, Harwood was to her friend and fellow poet Goldsworthy an ‘impish, irreverent devil’ …

The Nature Conservancy’s Nature Writing Prize

Today’s episode marks a collaboration between ABR and The Nature Conservancy’s Nature Writing Prize as ABR becomes Media Partner of the prize. In the episode, we consider the notion that theway we write about nature shapes the way we see it, value it, and act on its behalf. The eighth biennial Nat…

‘Peach’ by Ursula Brunetti

This week on The ABR Podcast, we feature the third-place winner of the 2026 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, ‘Peach’ by Ursula Brunetti. In Brunetti’s riveting coming-of-age story, an exchange student’s stay in the French countryside becomes increasingly tense when she discovers her host’s s…

‘“What I wanted to signal”: Women navigating the media’ by Virginia Haussegger

This week on The ABR Podcast, Virginia Haussegger reviews Women Who Win by Antoinette Lattouf, a book that is not about ‘the anatomy of winning’, but rather about ‘the impact of fighting’. Using her well-known legal case against the ABC as a narrative framework, Lattouf unfolds the stories of over …

‘Backflip’ by Sam Keenan

This week on The ABR Podcast, we feature ‘Backflip’ by New Zealand author Sam Keenan, which placed second in the 2026 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. Set in a small New Zealand town in the 1980s, ‘Backflip’ tells the story of a young girl’s disappearance and the community’s attempt to smoot…

‘Literary critic as democratic role model’ by Varun Ghosh

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature WA Senator Varun Ghosh’s essay, ‘Literary critic as democratic role model’, which discusses the relationship between literary criticism and politics. Ghosh argues that literary critique is crucial to the health of democracy. ‘A strong critical culture is pr…