Feature Articles posts
Mark’s Say: April, 2022
Pre-Covid, publishers would occasionally take booksellers out for drinks or dinner with one of their authors. Several years ago, Text Publishing had a function for Helen Garner. Sean O’Beirne, who also works as a bookseller, attended and was placed next to Helen. The two hit it off ; Sean, Helen and another writer began to meet regularly to talk about all sorts of things. Helen would read Sean’s…
An extract from The Future Is Fungi
Nothing alive exists in isolation. To be alive means to be part of an intricate, sprawling web of cause and effect. Our lives …
Authors share their favourite fictional visions of Australia
Grandmothers' Law Should Never Be Broken
In the night someone strung a line of crow carcasses across the fence outside her house. She discovers them as she leaves the house for work. Her breath catches in her chest and she cannot breathe. Jesus! she mutters, half in anger and half …
Readings staff share their MIFF 2019 top picks
I’ve been a regular at MIFF for over 20 years and sitting …
Q&A with Clare Strahan
Dear Reader, May 2019
One of the perennial delights of working with new books is that there are always more new books (though it’s also a constant anxiety, since there are far too many to read, even in a thousand lifetimes), and we’re always furnished with advance copies well ahead of their release to the general public. As a consequence, I’m often reading something that won’t be available for several months when I wr…
On the magic of a Hot Desk Fellowship
Q&A with Readings Children’s Book Prize winner Carly Nugent
We sat down with the Carly Nugent – author of the 2019 Readings Children’s Book Prize winner The Peacock Detectives – to talk about what makes a good mystery, what inspired her book and what she’s been reading.
Congratulations on winning the Readings Children’s Book Prize! Can you tell us a bit about why you wanted to write this story? Has the book been with you for a while?Thank you! It’s s…
Read an extract from Raising Readers by Megan Daley
If I have not…