The Bookshelf

Madeline Cash’s buzzy debut Lost Lambs pairs an off‑kilter storytelling sensibility with a sharp exploration of displacement and identity. George Saunders returns with Vigil, offering his moral curiosity in a novel that probes what it means to pay attention to the world. George Kemp’s Soft Serve delivers a charming and quietly affecting debut about growing up in a small town; and Steven Carroll’s The Afterlife of Harry Playford continues his investigations of history and memory.
BOOKS
Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs, Doubleday
George Saunders, Vigil, Bloomsbury
George Kemp, Soft Serve, UQP
Steven Carroll, The Afterlife of Harry Playford, Fourth Estate
GUESTS
Michael Robotham is an international crime writer and former journalist whose books include The Secrets She Keeps, Good Girl Bad Girl, and his latest, White Crow. His next novel — his first to be set in Australia — will be published in October.
Roanna Gonsalves is a writer and teacher of creative writing whose short‑story collection The Permanent Resident won wide acclaim. Her novel The Servants will be published later this year.
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Kurt Vonnegut, works
Joseph Heller, works
Thomas Pynchon, works
Jonathan Franzen, works
Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
Shaun Prescott, The Town
Stephen King, works
Liz Nugent, The Truth About Ruby Cooper
Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Deborah Adelaide, When I Am Sixty-Four
Tim Ayliffe, Dark Desert Road
Katie Kitamura, Audition
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Roi Huberman
Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

Kate and Cassie read award-winning Australian author Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s bold new novel Bugger, while reviewers Hannah Kent and Tom Wright take on Jennette McCurdy’s provocative new book Half His Age — from the former child actor whose memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died shook readers worldwide — and Nina McConigley’s How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder...does it live up to the name?
BOOKS 
Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Bugger, Hachette 
Jennette McCurdy, Half His Age, Fourth Estate 
Nina McConigley, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, Fleet 
GUESTS 
Hannah Kent, novelist, screenwriter, and memoirist, whose books include Burial Rites, The Good People, Devotion, and Always Home, Always Homesick 
Tom Wright, Artistic Associate at Belvoir St.Theatre 
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Jim Butcher, Twelve Months: The Dresden Files 
Sita Walker, In a Common Hour 
Jonas Jonasson, The Distinctly Competent District Councillor  
Catherine Newman, Wreck 
India-Rose Bower, We Call Them Witches 
Amie Kaufman, Red Star Rebels 
Yxavel Magno Diňo, The Firefly Crown 
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Olga Ravn, The Wax Child 
Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Travis Baldree, Brigands and Breadknives 
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Micky Grossman and Ann Marie Debettencor
Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

Kate and Cassie are back for a big year of books, beginning with Booker-Prize winner Julian Barnes' Departures, a novel about looking back, facing the future, and coming to the end of life. Plus, regular reviewers Tony Birch and Beejay Silcox join us for discussions on This, My Second Life by British novelist Patrick Charnley, and Iluka, by Australian author Cassie Stroud.
BOOKS
Julian Barnes, Departure(s), Jonathan Cape
Cassie Stroud, Iluka, HQ Books
Patrick Charnley, This, My Second Life, Hutchinson Heinemann
GUESTS
Tony Birch, poet, novelist and short story writer whose books include Dark as Last Night, Shadow Boxing, Women and Children and The White Girl. His latest is Pictures of You. He is also a Professor of Australian literature at the University of Melbourne
Beejay Silcox, critic, writer and regular interviewer at writers festivals.
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Lily King, Heart the Lover
Anne Enright, Attention
Melissa Lucashenko, Not Quite White in the Head
Bryan Washington, Palaver; Family Meal
Souvankham Thammavongsa, Pick the Colour
Charlotte Wood, The Weekend
Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
Jonathan Tropper, And Then We Came To the End
Maggie Shipstead, Seating Arrangements
Emily O'Grady, Feast
Hayle Felicity, Our Brother Nick and the Tolling Bell
Elizabeth Strout, My Name is Lucy Barton
Joe Hill, King Sorrow
Haldor Laxness, Independent People
Dani Netherclift The Shape of Absent Bodies
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Eric Puchner, Dream State
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
Sound engineer, Roi Hubermann and Ann Marie Debettencor
Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

Novelist and memoirist Maggie O'Farrell in conversation with Kate Evans at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival. Her nine novels include After You'd Gone, the Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, This Must be the Place, Hamnet and the Marriage Portrait . . . and her extraordinary memoir is I Am I Am I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death.

Kate and Cassie on stage at the 2025 Brisbane Writers Festival with authors Eric Puchner, Toni Jordan, Patrick Holland, and Zeynab Gamieldien, discussing their most recent novels and the books and writers who inspire them. This discussion was recorded in front of a live audience, just ahead of our Top 100 Books of the Century.
It was first broadcast on Friday 17 October 2025
GUESTS
Eric Puchner, novelist, academic, and short story writer, whose books include the collections Last Day on Earth and Music Through the Floor, and the novels Model Home and (his latest) Dream State
Toni Jordan, a writer whose novels include Nine Days, Our Tiny, Useless Hearts, Prettier If She Smiles More, Dinner with the Schnabels . . . and her latest, Tenderfoot
Patrick Holland is a writer and academic, and author of eight books, including the novel The Mary Smokes Boys and — his latest — Oblivion. He lives between Hong Kong and Brisbane
Zeynab Gamieldien is a writer whose first novel, The Scope of Permissibility, won the inaugural WestWords/Ultimo Prize (for emerging writers from Western Sydney); and her second novel, Learned Behaviours, has just been published
BOOKS MENTIONED BY ERIC PUCHNER
•    James Salter, Light Years
•    Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
•    Joy Williams, works
•    Willa Cather, My Ántonia
•    Jhumpa Lahiri, A Temporary Matter
•    Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
•    Evan S. Connell, Mrs. Bridge
•    César Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter
BOOKS MENTIONED BY TONI JORDAN
•    Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones
•    Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe
•    Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
•    Zadie Smith, White Teeth
•    Alexis Wright, Carpentaria
•    Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet
•    Richard Ford, Canada
BOOKS MENTIONED BY PATRICK HOLLAND
•    Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country
•    Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
•    Ernest Hemingway, 88 Poems
•    Leah Swann, Bearings
•    Felix Calvino, works
•    Brian Castro, works
•    Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse
•    Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; All the Pretty Horses
•    Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
BOOKS MENTIONED BY ZEYNAB GAMIELDIEN
•    Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
•    Tara June Winch, The Yield
•    Hisham Matar, The Return; My Friends
•    Anne Enright, The Gathering
•    Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn; Long Island
•    Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
•    Sally Rooney, Intermezzo
OTHER BOOKS AND WRITERS MENTIONED
•    J.G. Ballard, works
•    Graham Greene, The Quiet American
•    David Malouf, works
•    Patrick White, works
•    Curtis Sittenfeld, Show Don't Tell
•    David Mitchell, works
CREDITS
•    Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
•    Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett
•    Sound engineer, Steve Fieldhouse + Harvey O'Sullivan
•    Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown