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Compulsive Reader's author interviews, book chat, literary discussions, readings and more. It's an audio haven for book lovers! Recent and upcoming guests include Terry Denton, Marion Halligan, Sir Ken Robinson, Emily Ballou, Sofie Laguna, Matthew Riley, John Banville, Felicity Plunkett, Mark Coker, Peter Bowerman, Eric Maisel, Ramona Koval, Tim Flannery, Carl Zimmer, Gail Jones, Jane Smiley, Frank Delaney, Ben Okri, and many more.
This podcast is hosted by Max VanArnam, son of VanArnam Vineyards' founders and owners Allison and Kent VanArnam. In this podcast we talk about a wide range of wine topics including growing grapes and making wine here in Washington state.
Lorna Munro or Yilinhi is a Wiradjuri and Gamilaroi woman, multidisciplinary artist, poet, performer, radio and podcast host. She joins me today in the lead-up to the Sydney Writers' Festival to read some of her poems and talk about her work, her collaborations with Ancestress and Eric Avery as Poetribe, the power of spoken word, speaking language,…
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Nick Courtright on The Proofs, the Figures: Walt Whitman and the Meaning of Poems.
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Kristina Darling interviews Nick Courtright about his new book The Proofs, the Figures: Walt Whitman and the Meaning of Poems. In “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman wryly remarks about one’s being “proud to get at the meaning of poems,” a comment highlighting the long-fraught problem of poetic interpretation and the pride-worthy intellectual labor requ…
Jessica Au’s first novel, Cargo, was published by Picador in 2011 and was highly commended in the Kathleen Mitchell Award for a writer under 30. She is the former deputy editor of Meanjin, and is currently an associate editor at Aeon. Her new book Cold Enough for Snow won the inaugural Novel Prize and was published by Giramondo, New Directions and …
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Charles Freyberg on The Crumbling Mansion
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Charles Freyberg reads from and talks about his latest book of poetry The Crumbling Mansion and chats with me about performance and the power of memorisation, bringing characters to life, Kings Cross and its importance in his work, on nostalgia and ecological loss, on breaking binaries, his new work-in-progress and much more. You can find some exce…
KA Rees is a writer of poetry and short fiction. She has been published by Margaret River Press, Cordite, Australian Poetry, Overland, Review of Australian Fiction, Spineless Wonders and Yalobusha Review, among others. She received a Varuna fellowship for her manuscript of short stories, she was shortlisted for the 2016 Judith Wright Poetry Award, …
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James Bradley | Author of Clade - on climate fiction
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On its one-year anniversary, we've re-aired, with permission, James Bradley's wonderful conversation with Beth Spencer from Climactic's ArtBreaker. James and Beth Spencer spoke about James' new book Clade, about climate fiction, and about the imperative for art and the conversation is even more relevant today and deserves a replay. Original publica…
Tad Fewel joins the podcast!By Max VanArnam
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Beth Spencer in conversation with Kit Kelen
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Beth Spencer in conversation with Kit Kelen about his creative practice as poet, artist, publisher, collaborator, academic, mentor, musician and blogger. Kit reads selections from some of his many books intercut with original guitar tracks. They discuss Holden cars, bushfires, coal-addiction, and the role of place in his work -- as a writer who use…
By Max VanArnam
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Vines to Wines
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Ep. 10 - Marty Johnson: Winemaker and Owner of Ruby Magdalena Vineyards
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Marty Johnson joins the podcast!By Max VanArnam
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Ep. 9 - Ryder Langley: Direct-to-Consumer and Guest Relations Manager at J. Bookwalter Winery
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Ryder Langley joins the podcast!By Max VanArnam
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Ep. 8 - Barbara Glover: Executive Director at Wine Yakima Valley
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Barbara Glover (Wine Yakima Valley) joins the podcast!By Max VanArnam
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Ep. 7 - Trent Ball: Winemaking Education, Yakima Valley College and More!
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Trent Ball, department chair of Yakima Valley College's agriculture program and instructor for the Vineyard and Winery Technology program, joins Max for the podcast!By Max VanArnam
Lillian Avedian is an Armenian American journalist and poet from Los Angeles. In this episode she reads from and talks about her debut book of poetry, Journey to Tatev. We talk about many of the key themes in the book - the many journeys: physical, metaphorical, about the uneasy alliance between grandmother, mother, daughter, on coming out, the rej…
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Ep. 6 - Chef John Caudill: Wine Pairing, Sheridan Vineyards and More!
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Culinary expert Chef John Caudill joins the podcast!By Max VanArnam
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Paul Vandenberg - Organic Winegrowing, Perspectives on Sustainability and More
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Paul Vandenberg, owner of Paradisos del Sol vineyard and winery, joins the podcast for the first time.By Max VanArnam
Adam Aitken reads from and talks about his memoir One Hundred Letters Home. We talk about the book's multi-genres structure, the limits of memory, artefacts and perception, "fluid subject positions" and the shifting nature of identity, his poetry book Archipelago and the ongoing appeal of France, his new book due out later in the year, and lots mor…
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Matt Rawn - Mini Rosé Bottles, Running a Winery with a Sibling and Washington Wine Across the U.S.
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Matt Rawn, co-owner of Two Mountain Winery, joins Max for the first time on the podcast.By Max VanArnam
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David Rodriguez - Argentina, How Long Opened Wine Lasts and The Harvest Process
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David Rodriguez, winemaker at Dineen Vineyards, joins the podcast for the first time!By Max VanArnam
Australian academic, writer, and poet, Michael J. Leach reads from and talks about his latest poetry book Chronicity. We talk about such things as the relationship between the visual/concrete poems on the page and their sonic qualities in live readings, the sensual, visceral nature of the work, how he chooses and works with constraints, his use of …
Max talks with Brandon about Tempranillo and other related wine topics.By Max VanArnam
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Brandon Seymour - First Episode, Malbec, Terminology and More!
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This is the first episode of Vines to Wines podcast! Tune in to Max and Brandon as they talk about the wine varietal Malbec and other related topics.By Max VanArnam
Australian writer Emily Maguire's new novel is a clear-eyed and compassionate novel about love and family, betrayal and forgiveness, and the things we do to fill our empty spaces. In this interview, created for The Newcastle Writers' Festival's Stories to You series https://www.newcastlewritersfestival.org.au/news/#podcasts, Emily reads from and ta…
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Alison Treat interviews Leslie K Barry about Newark Minutemen
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In this guest episode, author and podcaster Alison Treat interviews Leslie K Barry about her book Newark Minutemen. Note that this is a re-pod from Alison's excellent podcast Historical Fiction: Unpacked. In this interview, author Leslie K. Barry talks Newark Minutemen, and its historical 1938 setting, including the little known history behind the …
Chris Mansell is one of Australia’s notable powerhouses in the poetry world. Chris was one of the founders of Five Islands Press and now runs PressPress, an independent publishing house she founded in 2002. Chris has had over a dozen of her own books of poetry published as well as artist books, CDs, a collection of short fiction and even a children…
Does being vegan mean having to miss out on burgers, jalapeno peppers and deep-fried banana fritters? No way, according to Melbourne writer and vegan recipe developer Zacchary Bird. In this episode that aired for the Newcastle Writers Festival's Stories to You series, Zacchary spills the tea on his first book Vegan Junk Food.…
Paul Rabinowitz talks to Tinfoil Crowns author Erin Jones about his novella The Clay Urn. They talk about the inspiration for his story, on working with a real situation--the Arab/Isreali conflict--in a fictional context, his evocative setting, his own experiences in the Isreali army, the complexity of war and the impact of that on young people, on…
The author of Black Rabbit and co-owner of Sappho Books reads from and talks about his latest novel and its quirky characters, about the impact of 2020, about themes and his writing style, the inherent beauty of writing for oneself, the value of small publishers, his work-in-progress, the book he's reading and loving (Janet Frame's An Autobiography…
Denise O'Hagan reads from and talks about her new poetry book The Beating Heart. We cover such things as how the book came about, the relationship between memoir, poetry, and meaning making, on the use of sensual stimulus and poetry is everywhere, on time, and the way our pasts are ever present, on the 'heart' of and in the book, on editing for The…
Author, mentor, writing teacher and speaker Lee Kofman reads from about talks about her memoir Imperfect. In this brief but far-reaching conversation, we talk about some of Lee's key themes such as body surface and how it shapes us, the power of creative nonfiction, combining memoir and research and the connection for her, how she chose the people …
Nicola Redhouse reads from her book Unlike the Heart and talks about the way her research grew from her own postnatal anxiety to something much bigger, about the relevance of the literary perspective on scientific inquiry, her readership, the genetic links that drive us, on the way in which her book helped her family, her works in progress and lots…
Maria Tumarkin reads from her award-winning book Axiomatic and talks about language and accents, the many different representations of time in Axiomatic: horizontal, vertical, chronological, cyclical, and 'real' and how she represents these multiple temporalities, about her characters and their complexities, about memory and the limitations of narr…
Sophie Hardcastle reads from her latest and much lauded novel Below Deck. We also talked about many things including her Provost scholarship at Oxford, on being an artist-in-resident with Chimu Adventures in Antarctica, the big themes of Below Deck, including ecology, respect, compassion, and the interconnectedness of all things, the link between v…
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Gillian Swain book launch My skin its own sky
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Following the cancelled Newcastle Writers Festival, Gillian Swain and I decided to launch her new poetry book, My skin its own sky, online. The launch was featured in this year's online Newcastle Writers Festival #NWFSTORIESTOYOU (see video link below). My skin its own sky was published in Dec 2019 by Flying Island Books, and is Gillian's second pu…
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Virtual launch of Morgan Bell's Idiomatic, for the people
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As the Newcastle Writers Festival had to be cancelled this year due to Coronavirus, we did a virtual launch for Morgan Bell's poetry chapbook Idiomatic, for the people. The session, which we conducted with Zoom, was a lot of fun and after my launch Morgan read and spoke about several of the poems in the collection, as well as how the book came toge…
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Roslyn McFarland on All the Lives We've Lived
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Jessica Mehta talks with novelist and poet Nina Murray
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Jenny Blackford on The Girl in the Mirror
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Multi-talented polymath Jenny Blackford reads from her new middle-grade novel The Girl in the Mirror and talks about her attraction to different genres, how the book came about, her attraction to sci-fi (and why she chose to entangle her protagonists), the book’s lovely illustrations (especially those redbacks), on her different fan streams, her la…
The author of The Wolf Hour reads from and talks about her latest novel, its origins and her research, her characters, writing about Uganda, the micro world of her family and the macro world of global politics, on sibling tension and bonds, her work in progress, and lots more. Find out more about Sarah and The Wolf Hour at https://sarahmyles.com.au…
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Peter Valentine on World heritage Sites of Australia
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Peter Valentine reads from and talks about his new book World Heritage Sites of Australia. In this wide-ranging discussion, we talk about the book and how it came about, why he’s pleased it took the more popular and less academic form of a coffee table book, the critical importance of protecting and celebrating our most important ecological areas, …
Eliana Gray reads from and talks about their new poetry book Eager to Break. In this candid interview we talk about such things as writing about, through, and after trauma, on finding new forms of language, on writing about the body, on blurring and allowing for multitudes in pronouns, on self-acceptance, love, and healing, on eggs, and lots more. …
Richard James Allen reads from and talks about his new poetry book, The Short Story of You and I, exploring topics such as his book's themes and unique dialectical structure, the relationship between the poems and the reader, writing about love, the delicate motion between the metaphysical and the concrete, the relationship between poetry and quant…
Bram Presser drops by to read from The Book of Dirt and we chat about many things including the Holocaust, the origins of his novel, the research he’s done, on the interplay between fact and fiction, the motif of dirt and his many golems, Czech folklore, his works in progress, and lots more. Find out more about Bram at: https://brampresser.com/the-…
Anne Casey drops by to read from and talk about her debut poetry collection Where the Lost Things Go, including the poem that started it all (fifth most read item in The Irish Times “In memoriam II: The draper” which actually made both of us cry, some of the many themes in the book: loss, anger, compassion, the migrant's guilt, poetry as activism, …
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Ali Whitelock on And My Heart Crumples Like a Coke Can
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Ali Whitelock reads from and talks about her latest poetry book And My Heart Crumples Like a Coke Can. We cover such topics as Ali's particular take-no-prisoners style, on being candid, how the book came together, on being a permanent migrant, her work-in-progress, and lots more. You can find Ali at her website: http://www.aliwhitelock.com…
Poet Steve Armstrong joins us to read a number of poems from his new poetry book Broken Ground. We also talk about the healing power of poetry and the magic of nature, about his poetry practice, on writing the 'walking poem', themes, rhythms, on the subtle droll humour running through the book, the difference between writing poetry and using poetry…
Jill Jones joins us to read several poems from and talk about her latest poetry book Brink. We discuss some of the key themes in the book (what does it mean to be on the 'brink'), the changing face of eco-poetry (and why trees remain fertile subjects for poets), the way the book came together, its editing process, the relationship between fiercenes…
Poet Kathryn Fry reads a number of poems from her latest poetry collection Green Point Bearings and talks about the book's inspiration, how many of the poems came about and how the collection came together, her interest in the natural world, on mindfulness and the power of paying attention, on Ekphrasis and the paintings of Margaret Olly, the notio…
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Holly Ringland on The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
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Holly Ringland, author ofThe Lost Flowers of Alice Hart joins us to read a little from the book and talk about the wonderful language of flowers she invents for the book and how that came about, writing and trauma, her recently completed book tour, the impact of leaving Australia, Alice in Wonderland, Sturt's Desert Peas and Alice Springs, on the v…
