Melbourne Writers Festival

Feb 25 2025 100 ep. 48 mins 19
Melbourne Writers Festival Podcast artwork

Australia's boldest literary festival.

  Society & Culture  Arts
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Paul Lynch: Prophet Song

Feb 25 2025 55 mins  
Booker Prize-winning novelist Paul Lynch discusses his propulsive and lyrically rendered cautionary fable with Michael Williams.   Prophet Song is a fearless portrait of Irish society on the brink of tyranny and a mother’s battle to save her family. Throwing into sharp relief the social and political anxieties of our times, it has been hailed as ‘a literary ma

Bri Lee and Liam Pieper: Real Pieces of Work

Jan 20 2025 58 mins  
Bri Lee and Liam Pieper discuss their scathingly funny novels that reveal the tensions of money, power and love in the arts, with Sarah L’Estrange.   Lee's debut novel, The Work, delves into the volatile world of modern art, exposing it as a bedfellow to high finance. Pieper’s Appreciation is an outrageous satire that sets its sights on questions of authe

Viet Thanh Nguyen in Ghosts: An Evening of Storytelling

Jan 13 2025 6 mins  
Ghost stories are everywhere. In fairytales, folklore, Gothic novels and modern fiction alike. There are the ghosts that plague our minds – old flames, past wrongs and regrets that come to us in the dead of night – and those that haunt history itself, restless spirits that refuse to rest in peace.   Gather round our metaphorical campfire and hear Viet Thanh Ng

First Knowledges: Innovation with Ian J McNiven and Lynette Russell

Jan 06 2025 59 mins  
First Nations peoples are some of the oldest innovators in the world.   Hear from authors Ian J McNiven and Lynette Russell in conversation with Larissa Behrendt as they share insight into ingenuity that spans millennia, including body shaping, building artificial reefs for oyster farms, repurposing glass from Europeans into spearheads, and novel economic responses to col

Paul Murray and Bryan Washington: Familiar Haunts

Dec 16 2024 54 mins  
Irish novelist Paul Murray and American author Bryan Washington have penned two of the best ghost stories, of sorts, in living memory. Murray’s The Bee Sting is a sprawling tragicomedy of a family haunted by the ghosts of past trauma. Washington’s tender exploration of lust, love and grief, Family Meal, features the spectre of a lost lover and the phantoms of opportunit

Louise Milligan in Ghosts: An Evening of Storytelling

Dec 09 2024 10 mins  
Ghost stories are everywhere. In fairytales, folklore, Gothic novels and modern fiction alike. There are the ghosts that plague our minds – old flames, past wrongs and regrets that come to us in the dead of night – and those that haunt history itself, restless spirits that refuse to rest in peace. Gather round our metaphorical campfire and hear Louise Milligan (Pheasant’s Ne

Who's Afraid of Reading, Anyway?

Dec 03 2024 56 mins  
It’s little wonder books have been censored, banned and burned throughout history, given their power to shape thought, challenge belief and open whole wide worlds inside us. Beloved novelists Tony Birch, Lauren Groff and Ann Patchett reveal the ‘inappropriate’ texts of their early reading lives and the books they’d encourage readers of all ages to pick up. Birch shares in

Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood: Black Duck

Nov 24 2024 60 mins  
From bestselling Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe and his partner, editor Lyn Harwood, comes Black Duck, a deeply personal story of the consequences for changing Australian history. Pascoe and Harwood speak with Paul Barclay about living in harmony with Country based on very old practices, and why 'sometimes you need to repeat something a hundred times before a bell rings in the colon

Leslie Jamison in Ghosts: An Evening of Storytelling

Nov 18 2024 8 mins  
Ghost stories are everywhere. In fairytales, folklore, Gothic novels and modern fiction alike. There are the ghosts that plague our minds – old flames, past wrongs and regrets that come to us in the dead of night – and those that haunt history itself, restless spirits that refuse to rest in peace. Gather round our metaphorical campfire and hear Leslie Jamison (Splinters), shar

The Ghost in the Machines

Nov 11 2024 62 mins  
As AI advances and outstrips our notions of its limits and potential, could it capture that essential, undefinable human quality of great art? And if so, how might we preserve the rights of artists? Leading AI experts Marek Kowalkiewicz (The Economy of Algorithms), Toby Walsh (Machines Behaving Badly) and Professor Margaret Cameron, Head of the School of Historical and Philosophic