Mel chats with author Nina Kenwood, whose debut novel It Sounded Better in My Head won the 2018 Text Prize of YA and Children’s Writing. Self-describing it as a ‘book with no villains’…

Celebrating The Big Issue’s 15th Fiction Edition, deputy editor Kathrine Smyrk chats to Backstory host Mel about the curating of another bumper issue of short stories penned by established and emerging writers.

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Women’s reproductive rights are still varied throughout Australia, with little discussion, information and education available to women about abortions. A new book, Choice Words, hopes to shed light on abortion through a collection…

Mark Rubbo OAM (and partners) purchased Readings in 1976, the same year Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computers. Since then the publishing and bookselling industries have been somewhat ‘under threat’. But…

Matters Journal, an eclectic literary nonfiction print publication that tells interconnected stories about design, art, the environment, and technology, is one year young and three issues in. Editor Megan Anderson visits Mel…

Taking the reader into post-World War One Italy, Elise Valmorbida’s novel The Madonna of the Mountains is about a young woman learning her strengths in an Italian mountain village under dire circumstances: fascism…

History is filled with extraordinarily talented artists who’ve had serious issues with substance abuse and addiction. Writer and essayist Leslie Jamison has compiled a literary history of some of these artists – John…

Thirteen years after The Book Thief, Sydney-based author Markus Zusak has followed it up with his new novel, Bridge of Clay, a story about a family holding themselves together after the death…

‘We’re working in this imperfect system that doesn’t recognise the subtle differences between us all,’ says Melanie Cheng, a writer, general practitioner and Chinese-Australian. Her debut short story collection Australia Day tackles this…

Mel Cranenburgh speaks to musician and author Holly Throsby about her second novel Cedar Valley, a mystery set in a small New South Wales country town. Featuring quirky small town characters, a…