Episode notes
This NAIDOC Week, Fully Lit revisits some of the standout conversations in our back catalogue with First Nations writers, critics and publishers. As a podcast about Australian literature, we believe First Nations storytelling sits at the heart of what is most vital, challenging and exciting about writing on this continent. Stories have been told here for tens of thousands of years, and First Nations writers continue to reshape how we read, write and think about literature. This special NAIDOC Week message is a reminder of just a few of the First Nations writers, critics and publishing…
Podcast
Fully Lit
Impact Studios and The Sydney Review of Books · Arts & Books · English
What is Australian literature today? How does it connect to its roots in our recent and ancient pasts? And where is it headed? Welcome to Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, where you'll hear a new conversation between authors, critics and readers each fortnight. Our original eight-par
More from Fully Lit All episodes →
-
E39 · 10 Sep 2026 · 50 min
39. Writing the Life of A.D. Hope
What makes a literary reputation endure, and why do some writers disappear from view despite once standing at the centre of a nation's culture? In this episode biographer Susan Lever joins poet and critic Peter Kirkpatrick to discuss her major new biography, A.D. Hope , tracing the life of a writer whose career spanned almost the entire twentieth century. From rural Tasmania and Sydney University to Oxford, Canberra and the centre of Australian literary life, the conversation examines Hope's poetry, criticism and public intellectual role, as well as the literary debates that shaped his…
-
E38 · 27 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
38. Afterlife Animals : Live from Addi Road Writers Festival
What remains after loss? How do we carry the people, places and versions of ourselves that are gone? And can art help us make sense of what endures? In this episode of Fully Lit , writer and broadcaster Sarah Runcie is joined by poet Vaughn Upward Garcia, musician Helen Franzmann, and writer and artist Judith Nangala Crispin for a wide-ranging conversation about grief, creativity and survival. Garcia reflects on recovery, reinvention and the journey behind his debut collection Poems from the Afterlife . Franzmann discusses the making of Jay Marie, Comfort Me , an album shaped by the death of…
-
E37 · 13 Aug 2026 · 42 min
37. What Books Know: Angela O'Keeffe
In conversation with Amy Sambrooke, Angela O’Keeffe discusses a book that asks an unusual and beguiling question: what if a book could think, feel and observe the world around it? Partly narrated by a sentient novel, Phantom Days follows a book as it moves between readers, witnessing intimate lives and uncovering secrets that its human characters cannot see. Along the way, the novel explores motherhood, memory, longing, truth and the strange relationship between writers, readers and the stories that connect them. O’Keeffe reflects on the novel’s origins, the challenge of writing from a…
-
E36 · 30 Jul 2026 · 56 min
36. What Makes a Writer: Live at the Sydney Writers Festival Paramatta
In this episode of Fully Lit , we bring you a live recording from the Sydney Writers’ Festival in Parramatta. Hosted by James Jiang, editor of the Sydney Review of Books , the panel brings together Maxine Beneba Clarke, Yumna Kassab and Eda Gunaydin for a wide-ranging conversation on what makes a writer. From early reading habits and first attempts at writing, to questions of craft, the discussion moves across the genres of fiction, memoir and poetry — exploring how writers navigate the realities of sustaining a writing life on and off the page. Fittingly, given its setting, the conversation…
-
E35 · 16 Jul 2026 · 44 min
35. Looking Closely: Lisa Gorton and Bella Li
In this episode of Fully Lit , we bring you a live recording from Melbourne with two poets in conversation, Lisa Gorton and Bella Li. Gorton reflects on nearly two decades of writing, moving between history, visual art and poetry. The discussion centres on the new sequence Caesars , where the Mona Lisa opens out into questions of looking, perception and meaning and how images continue to speak across time. It's a rich conversation about poetry, visual art, and the creative tension between history and invention. Voices Lisa Gorton is a poet, novelist and essayist whose work has won major…
-
E33 · 2 Jul 2026 · 38 min
33. Southern Connections: Live at Addi Road Writers Festival
In this episode of Fully Lit , recorded live at the Addison Road Writers’ Festival, we explore the richness and diversity of contemporary Latin American literature. Writer Yumna Kassab joins Uruguayan author and translator Rosario Lázaro Igoa in conversation with literary translator Chris Andrews to discuss the writers, genres and ideas shaping Latin American literature today. Moving beyond the literary Boom of the 1960s and 70s, they reflect on the work of contemporary writers including Mariana Enríquez, Samanta Schweblin, Guadalupe Nettel and Nona Fernández, and consider the growing…
-
E32 · 18 Jun 2026 · 43 min
32. Erin Vincent: Fragments, Grief and Memory
In this episode of Fully Lit , Erin Vincent, in conversation with writer and academic Sarah Attfield, reflects on returning to a subject she once believed she had left behind in her verse novel, 14 Ways of Looking. Moving between memoir, research and constraint‑based writing, the book is a fragmentary work that reimagines how grief can be written, building a mosaic of memory around the the number fourteen — Vincent's age when she lost both her parents. Drawing on the playful constraints of the Oulipo movement, Vincent constructs the book through fragments, each linked by the repeated…
-
E31 · 4 Jun 2026 · 45 min
31. Masculinity. Vulnerability. Growing up. Are the boys alright?
In this episode of Fully Lit , we head to the Addi Road Writers’ Festival for a wide‑ranging conversation on masculinity, vulnerability, and the inner lives of men. Writer Luke Carman is joined by George Haddad, author of Losing Face , and debut novelist Jet Williams to explore what it means to write — and read — men today. From graffiti culture and underground urban exploration to questions of embodiment, intimacy and cultural expectation, the discussion moves between lived experience and literary form. Williams reflects on writing for readers who don’t usually pick up books, while Haddad…
-
E30 · 21 May 2026 · 56 min
30. Olivia Murphy on the politics of monster-fucking
Scholar, insomniac, and accidental romantasy expert Olivia Murphy joins us to talk about the wildly popular adults-only genre that blends Mills & Boon-style romance with Game of Thrones-style world-building, and explore its cultural significance. Olivia is an expert on the popular novel of the long 18th century. In this conversation she draws a direct line from the forgotten, formulaic, novels that formed the trashy foundations on which Jane Austen's masterpieces were built to the dragon-shifter billionaires and tiger-men with unusual appendages dominating today's bestseller lists — and…
-
E29 · 7 May 2026 · 53 min
29. Vrasidas Karalis on Patrick White
In this episode of Fully Lit , recorded live at Gleebooks in Sydney, we turn to one of the most formidable figures in Australian literature — Patrick White . Nobel Prize–winning, fiercely private, and allergic to sentimentality, White remains both towering and divisive. But what does it mean to read him now? Writer and translator Vrasidas Karalis joins journalist and biographer Helen Trinca for a searching conversation about White’s life, art and legacy. From the quiet, enduring presence of his lifelong partner Manoly Lascaris to White’s metaphysics, irony and suspicion of tidy plots, the…
Take it with you
The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.
