Explore the poetic, philosophical, and genre-defying world of Gail Jones’s latest novel, The Name of the Sister, in this episode of Fully Lit Live. In conversation with fellow author Debra Adelaide, Jones reflects on genre—not writing a crime novel, but a modernist novel with a crime in it.

Jones’s writing is deeply visual, evoking imagery that lingers in the mind’s eye. She reminds us that we are made up of all we have read, and her work invites listeners to consider how literature shapes our inner worlds.

The Name of the Sister is Gail Jones' 11th novel, and it was published this year by Text.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with our friends at Gleebooks. Head to Gleebooks events page to discover more great literary events featuring some of Australia’s best and best known authors.

Gail Jones is a celebrated and prolific Australian writer, as well as a researcher and academic.

Debra Adelaide is the author or editor of 17 books, including novels, nonfiction, and reference works.

Fully Lit is made by Impact Studios, a media production house based on Gadigal land at UTS, Sydney.

This episode was recorded at Sydney's Gleebooks, also on Gadigal land.

Fully Lit is made by producer Regina Botros and its executive producers are Sarah Gilbert of UTS Impact Studios, and James Jiang, editor of the Sydney Review of Books.

In this spirited discussion, three critics—Max Easton, Eda Gunaydin, and Lucy Van—join Sydney Review of Books editor, James Jiang, to explore the evolving role of the critic. Together, they delve into how they each came to criticism, the influences that shaped their voices, the ethics and implications of writing negative reviews, and whether we are truly living in a post-literate culture.

This episode was recorded live as part of the Parramatta Lit Festival, held within the Sydney Fringe Festival on 6 September 2025 at Western Sydney University – Parramatta City Campus.

Host: James Jiang — Editor, Sydney Review of Books

Panelists: Max Easton, Eda Gunaydin, Lucy Van

Recording Engineer: Sevan Dermelkonian

Poetry month has been and gone, but we have plenty more to say about poetry and poetry criticism!

So we're bringing you a 2024 episode of 'Poetry Says,' wherein host Alice Allan reflects on Ben Etherington's 2015 essay 'The Poet Tasters' - a forensic and statistical critique of Australian poetry that brought Alice's career as a poetry reviewer to an abrupt stop.

What kind of critical culture do you get when most critics are also poets? And how can the reviewer not break out into a cold sweat when appraising the work of friends and colleagues?

Featuring

Alice Allan is a Melbourne writer and editor who brought her show, 'Poetry Says' to a close earlier this year, with its 300th episode.

Further reading and listening

Read 'The Poet Tasters', Ben Etherington's 2015 essay in the Sydney Review of Books,

Then read 'The Poet Eaters' - Alice Allan and James Jiang on poetry reviewing ten years after ‘The Poet Tasters.’

'Poetry Says' was published from 2016 to early 2025.

Credits

Regina Botros - producer

Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang - executive producers

Fully Lit is brought to you by UTS Impact Studios and the Sydney Review of Books.

Hear what poet and critic Sarah Holland-Batt has to say about Australia's as-yet-uncrowned Poet Laureate. She takes a close look at the tradition and explores poetry's relationship to power, highlighting the potential pitfalls and possible benefits of such a figure.

Can a poet laureate bring poetry back in Australia, where it's long been an afterthought for cultural policymakers? How might such a person engage our politics? And can we (shall we?) build the infrastructure to support poetic careers—not just poetic moments?

And, most urgently, how long will it take before someone dubs the be-laureled bard Australia's Poet Lorikeet?

Further reading

For the written version of this address, see The Poet in the Public Arena by Sarah Holland-Batt, published in Sydney Review of Books.

To learn more about her work, visit Sarah Holland-Batt.

CREDITS

Fully Lit is brought to you by UTS Impact Studios, the Sydney Review of Books and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

Executive producers, Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang.

Producer Regina Botros.

This special edition of Fully Lit Live was recorded at the Abercrombie Hotel in Sydney, on beautiful Gadigal land.

It was a night of celebration, conversation, and creative sparks, as we launched the podcast with a vibrant discussion on the power of audio as a medium for literary criticism - one where the critique is embodied, voiced and felt, and built in conversation with one another and with you, our listeners, in mind.

Sophie Gee of the Secret Life of Books was there to host a conversation with Lynda Ng and Ben Etherington, then Delia Falconer, of the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, introduced our friendly crowd to Eda Gunaydin, the 2025 UTS-Copyright Agency writer in residence.

Then we ate cake!

Further reading

Eda Gunaydin is the author of Root and Branch (2022, New South), a collection of essays. You can read many of her published essays via her website.

You can find Eileen Chong's poem, 'We Speak of Flowers,' about launching a book here, thanks to Kill Your Darlings.

Credits

This live event was recorded by Simon Branthwaite, who also did sound design on this episode.

Fully Lit is an Impact Studios podcast, made in collaboration with the Sydney Review of Books.

Its producer is Regina Botros.

Executive producers are Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang.

On this episode Teela Reid and Merinda Dutton, the co-founders of Blackfulla Bookclub, talk about the online community they’ve built around First Nations storytelling and discuss their experiences of reading Fire Front, an anthology of poetry and essays curated by Alison Whittaker. It’s about seeing, and hearing, and reading the world through powerful First Nations perspectives. Listen up.

We are republishing this episode from the Sydney Review of Books' very first podcast season, to mark this month's NAIDOC week celebrations.

* Please note that this episode contains names and references to deceased persons*

You can find Blackfulla Bookclub on Instagram @blackfulla_bookclub

Merinda Dutton is on Twitter and Instagram @min_dutton

Teela Reid is on Twitter and Instagram @teelareid

Fire Front: First Nations poetry And Power Today was curated by Alison Whittaker and published by UQP.

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggles for justice are ongoing. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands this digital platform reaches.

Fully Lit is brought to you by UTS Impact Studios, the Sydney Review of Books and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

In an engaging, though-provoking and moving conversation, Winnie Dunn, Julie Janson and Siang Lu - all shortlisted for the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award - discuss their nominated works, the ideas that shaped them, and the questions they raise about Australian life, literature and identity today, with writer and broadcaster Sunil Badami.

The Miles Franklin Literary Award is Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, awarded each year to a novel of the highest literary merit that presents Australian life in any of its phases.

This special episode of Fully Lit is presented by Copyright Agency Cultural Fund and Gleebooks, Sydney’s premier literary events program.

Head to Gleebooks' events page to discover more great literary events featuring some of Australia’s best and best known authors.

Winnie Dunn is a Tongan-Australian writer from Mount Druitt. She is the general manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement. Her debut novel is Dirt Poor Islanders, published by Hachette.

Julie Janson is a Burruberongal woman of the Darug Aboriginal nation NSW. She is a novelist, playwright, and poet. Her novel Compassion is published by Magabala Books.

Her career as a playwright resulted in ten productions at various theatres including Belvoir and Sydney Opera House. As a poet she is co-recipient of the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize 2016 and winner of the Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2019.

Her Indigenous crime novel Madukka the River Serpent was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2023. Benevolence, an Indigenous historical novel published by Magabala in 2020, and later published by Harper Collins in the USA and UK, was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award 2022 and the Voss Literary Prize. Her shortlisted novel Compassion is a sequel to Benevolence A gripping historical novel set in colonial NSW, charting resistance, survival, and legacy through the life of a Darug woman outlaw.

Siang Lu is the author of Ghost Cities, published by University of Queensland Press.

His first book The Whitewash won the ABIA Audiobook of the Year in 2023. Ghost Cities has been shortlisted for five literary awards, including the 2025 Russell Prize for Humour Writing, the VPLA John Clarke Humour Award, the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize and The University of Queensland Fiction Book Award and The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award at the Queensland Literary Awards. In 2023 Siang was named one of the Top 40 Under 40 Asian-Australians at the Asian-Australian Leadership Awards.

Fully Lit is is a podcast by Impact Studios, a media production house based on Gadigal land at UTS, Sydney.

This episode was recorded at Gleebooks, at an event hosted by Sunil Badami.

Sound engineering by Simon Branthwaite.

Executive producer, Sarah Gilbert.

Writer, editor and producer Charle Malycon (Penguin Random House and Overland literary journal) and co-founder and director of Amplify bookstore, Jing Xuan Teo, join Alice Grundy to dissect the current state of the industry. What goes on behind the scenes? What is the work of publishing today and who is doing it? Our guests share their personal experiences in publishing and bookselling, taking the listener through the complex process of getting a book from manuscript to reader and highlighting the many hands that shape the reader’s experience.

Alice Grundy is Managing Editor of Australia Institute Press and a Research Manager at The Australia Institute. She worked in book publishing for over a decade before researching a PhD on editing and publishing history, the first half of which was published as a minigraph by Cambridge University Press.

Charle Malycon (Shh-arl, she//her) is an editor, writer and critic. She is a fulltime editor at one of Australia’s largest publishing houses and has poetry, monologues, short stories and literary reviews published in ABR, Meanjin, Overland, UTS Writers’ Anthology, UTS Central and Voices for Woman. She has an MA Creative Writing, a BA Communications and is a professional member of IPEd, APA and ASA.

Jing Xuan Teo is a freelance marketer and co-founder of Amplify Bookstore, Australia's first antiracist bookstore specialising in books by BIPOC authors. Her focus is on strategic content creation, community building and supporting marginalised authors throughout the publishing process.

Readings

Author and bookseller Laura Elizabeth Woollett reading from her essay, ‘Paying to Play’, at the Sydney Review of Books.

Fully Lit is presented by Anna Funder.

The podcast series is produced, edited and sound designed by Regina Botros.

Sound engineering by Simon Branthwaite.

Executive producers are James Jiang and Sarah Gilbert.

Fully Lit is a co-production between UTS Impact Studios and the Sydney Review of Books, with support from the UTS Writing and Publishing Program.

To cite this episode:

Impact Studios, Botros, R., Gilbert, S., & Jiang, J. (2025, May 15). Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, Ep 8, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15421502