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2 months ago | 
themonthly.com.au | Michael Williams |Sean Wilson
Sean joins Michael for a conversation about loss, family, and how to hang on to one’s humanity as illness strips it away. In Melbourne-based author Sean Wilson’s new book, You Must Remember This, he tackles the complicated, tragic, and often fraught subject of dementia.. This week, Sean joins Michael for a conversation about loss, family, and how to hang on to one’s humanity as illness strips it away.
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Nov 6, 2024 | 
themonthly.com.au | Michael Williams |Santilla Chingaipe
Michael is joined in studio by filmmaker, historian and author Santilla Chingaipe to discuss her new book Black Convicts. Santilla Chingaipe was born to tell stories. The Zambian-born filmmaker, historian and author, has spent her career exploring settler colonialism, slavery, and contemporary migration in Australia and she has just released her first book of non-fiction.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
themonthly.com.au | Michael Williams |Tim Winton
It is more or less impossible to imagine Australian literature of the past half century without Tim Winton. It was 1981 when his debut novel An Open Swimmer won the Vogel prize. Tim was a 21-year-old creative writing student at Curtin uni, and already in that first book were features that would become stylistic hallmarks: the characters, the perceptive insights into the inner life of a teen boy, the coast and the bush.
It’s that last point that perhaps is Winton’s greatest legacy.
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Oct 22, 2024 | 
themonthly.com.au | Michael Williams |Nardi Simpson
This episode of Read This includes a discussion about Indigenous people who are now deceased. Please take care while listening.
That’s the music of Sydney acoustic duo the Stiff Gins: Kaleen Briggs and Nardi Simpson. They’ve been writing and performing together for over 20 years.
And as gorgeous as it is, you shouldn’t just know Nardi Simpson from the voice she sings with. On the page, in the written word, she’s even more impressive.
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Oct 15, 2024 | 
themonthly.com.au | Michael Williams |Robbie Arnott
Michael sits down with award-winning Australian writer Robbie Arnott to discuss his new novel, Dusk, which explores loss and redemption and survival in Tasmania’s high country. In just three books Robbie Arnott has established himself as a writer to trust. Flames (2018), The Rain Heron (2022) and Limberlost (2022) were all rapturously reviewed and garnered a hefty swag of award nominations and wins.
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Oct 11, 2024 | 
thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Michael Williams
As Iris Renshaw and her twin brother, Floyd, make their way into the unfamiliar terrain of Tasmania’s high country, more than once she reflects that unlocking the sights surrounding them requires specialist knowledge. The rich canvas of life all around is only apparent “if you’re paying attention”. Others describe the country as “harsh, desolate” but Iris feels a “freeing, lung-emptying openness”.
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Oct 9, 2024 | 
themonthly.com.au | Michael Williams |Ben Shewry
A weekly show about the books we love and the stories behind them. Hear the best writers from Australia and around the world talk about their lives and their work. How to listen? Michael sits down with Attica’s head chef to discuss his new memoir, Uses for Obsession. There are few people in this country as obsessed with understanding the cultural and social potential of Australian cuisine as New Zealand-born chef Ben Shewry.
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Oct 2, 2024 | 
themonthly.com.au | Michael Williams |Melanie Cheng
Melanie Cheng’s newest novel, The Burrow, stole an evening of my life. I was already a fan of her first two books – short story collection Australia Day and her first novel, Room for a Stranger. She’s a terrific writer and I was excited that she had a new book coming out. And The Burrow looked promising: gorgeous cover, with a large, implacable rabbit on the front, and a blurb that intrigued, describing the Melbourne-based family, Jin, Amy, and Lucie, at the novel’s core.
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
themonthly.com.au | Michael Williams |Rumaan Alam
It's a funny thing talking to writers about their creative process. The approach, the way they're able to articulate and conceive of the intangible elements that conspire to allow them to do what they do. It sits somewhere between solid, functional, deliberate craft on the one hand, and something altogether more nebulous; hand-wavey mystery. Some writers plan. Others make it up as they go along. Some base character and incident on research, on lived experience on the historical record.
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Sep 18, 2024 | 
themonthly.com.au | Michael Williams |Richard Osman
Literary prejudice is a funny thing. All of us are guilty of it. The more we know our own tastes as readers, the more set in our ways we become about the things we value in a book and our personal subjective notions of merit. The more we all become adept at judging a book by its genre, by its subject matter, and let's be honest, by its cover. When I first got a job in publishing, my Uncle Patrick bought me a copy of a biography of one of the world's great publishers.
