This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature Kate Fullagar’s essay ‘Questions for Mai: Joshua Reynolds’s portrait and the memory of Empire’. Fullagar delves into the history behind Joshua Reynold’s famous portrait of Mai, the first Pacific Islander to visit Britain. She considers what she calls a ‘complicated enmeshment of art, money, and national memory’ and investigates the portrait’s place in the British Empire. Kate Fullagar is Professor of History at Australian Catholic University, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, and Vice President of the Australian Historical Association. Here is Kate Fullagar with ‘Questions for Mai: Joshua Reynolds’s portrait and the memory of Empire’, published in the October issue of ABR.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Judith Bishop reviews Empire of AI: Inside the reckless race for total domination by Karen Hao and The AI Con: How to fight Big Tech’s hype and create the future we want by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna. Bishop seeks to cut through what she sees as prevailing ‘AI doomer/boomer ideologies’, where artificial intelligence is something that will either save us, or kill us. Judith Bishop is the 2024-2026 Tracey Banivanua Mar Fellow at La Trobe University and is writing a book about AI and human data. Here is Judith Bishop with ‘AI will kill us/save us: Hype and harm in the new economic order’, published in the October issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast we feature Tracey Slaughter’s short story ‘Sediment’, which placed second in the 2025 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. ‘Sediment’ takes the form of twenty-seven brilliant points about living and loving in a female share house. It encompasses intense casual relationships and snarks at a landlord and his rotten portfolio. The story reflects on being young, poor, and wild, and is frenetically evocative of contemporary urban lives and their characteristic insecurity. The language is fresh while confronting and dismantling of conventions, offering an affront to widely accepted middle-class mores. Tracey Slaughter is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist from Aotearoa New Zealand. She was a previous runner up in the 2018 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and won the 2024 Calibre Essay Prize. With this short story, Slaughter becomes the first person to have placed in all three ABR prizes. Here is ‘Sediment’ by Tracey Slaughter, published in the August issue of ABR.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature Sean Scalmer’s commentary ‘Albanese’s “Australian Way”: The rise of “progressive patriotism” and its complex past’. Scalmer investigates Albanese’s definition of the ‘Australian Way’, which ‘served as a touchstone on the campaign trail’, and asks what this ethos represents for the Labor government, particularly in the context of Australia’s complex history of labour reform. Sean Scalmer is Professor of History at the University of Melbourne and his latest book is A Fair Day’s Work: The quest to win back time. Here is Sean Scalmer with ‘Albanese’s “Australian Way”: The rise of “progressive patriotism” and its complex past’, published in the October issue of ABR.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature ‘Deeper into darkness: Iran after the twelve-day war’. Australian journalist Zoe Holman writes on life in Iran after the recent twelve-day war, investigating whether conflict brought Iranians closer to democracy or further away from it. She speaks to Iranians in the diaspora, including a London-based academic from Tehran who withheld his name for security reasons, about his concerns around regime change through conflict. Many Iranians think ‘any regime is better than this one’, he reflects, ‘but we can always go deeper into darkness. I don’t want to replace a theocratic regime with a secular but proto-fascist one.’ Zoe Holman is a journalist, writer, and poet whose work has appeared in outlets including The Economist, the Guardian, London Review of Books, and Jacobin. She is the author of Where the Water Ends: Seeking refuge in Fortress Europe. Here is Zoe Holman with ‘Deeper into darkness: Iran after the twelve-day war’, published in the September issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast we feature Tara Sharman’s short story ‘Shelling’, which won the 2025 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. In ‘Shelling’, we meet a woman in flight, driving with the corpse of her dead father stowed in the boot of her car. Stunningly written, savagely honest, this is a story about grief – the grief of losing a father, the grief of losing a childhood, the grief of having to live beyond a state of innocence. Tara Sharman, at twenty-two years old, becomes the youngest winner of an ABR prize. Here is ‘Shelling’ by Tara Sharman, published in the August issue of ABR.

This week on the ABR Podcast, we feature Clinton Fernandes’ commentary ‘“Without undue suffering”: Japan’s August 1945 and the superweapon alibi’. On the eightieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, historian Clinton Fernandes delivers a gripping reassessment of the world’s only use of atomic bombs against civilians and exposes the ‘superweapon alibi’ that enabled a politically convenient end to World War II for both the United States and Japan. Fernandes draws on Japanese archives referring to the bombs as ‘heaven sent’ and ‘gifts from the gods’, as well as US government reports that they were dropped ‘without undue suffering’. He argues that nuclear weapons facilitate new geopolitical realities – ones we should be cognisant of as Australia invests further in AUKUS. Here is Clinton Fernandes with ‘“Without undue suffering”: Japan’s August 1945 and the superweapon alibi’, published in the August issue of ABR.

This week on the ABR Podcast, Lynda Ng reviews To Save and To Destroy: Writing as an Other by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Nguyen, who arrived in the United States from Vietnam as a child refugee in 1975, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer. To Save and To Destroy is a collection of pieces Nguyen delivered for the prestigious Norton Lectures. Ng considers Nguyen’s primary subject – the category of otherness – and what ‘it means for such a significant part of the population to be continuously singled out and labelled as “other”’. Lynda Ng is a Lecturer in World Literature (including Australian Literature) at the University of Melbourne. She is the editor of Indigenous Transnationalism: Essays on Carpentaria (2018). Here is Lynda Ng with ‘Other Orientalisms: Refusing to be spectacle’, published in the August issue of ABR.

This week on the ABR Podcast, Marilyn Lake reviews After America: Australia and the new world order by Emma Shortis and Hard New World: Our post-American future (Quarterly Essay 98) by Hugh White. Lake observes that both ‘authors argue that it is time to imagine a post-American world’ and emphasise ‘the necessity of retrieving our relationship with China’. Lake applauds these authors for their ‘specifically Australian perspective and vantage point’ and conclusion that ‘Australia find its security not from Asia but in Asia’. Marilyn Lake is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her most recent book is Progressive New World: How settler colonialism and TransPacific exchange shaped American reform (Harvard University Press, 2019). Here is Marilyn Lake with ‘Dogged pursuit: Australia’s “America first” policy’, published in the August issue of ABR.

This week on the ABR Podcast, Felicity Plunkett reviews new collections of Antigone Kefala’s poetry and fiction, observing that the belated recognition of this major Australian figure suggests that Kefala has moved beyond the designation ‘migrant writer’. ABR was this week delighted to announce that Felicity Plunkett is ABR’s new Poetry Editor. Her latest work, A Kinder Sea, is published by UQP. Listen to Felicity Plunkett with ‘Some undefined peace: Moving beyond “migrant writer”, published in the July issue of ABR.

This week on the ABR Podcast we feature James Curran’s commentary ‘Balance sheet blues: The pros and cons of Pax Americana coming to an end’. Curran’s focus is the evolving relationship between Australia and America during and beyond Trump’s second administration. James Curran is a Professor of Modern History at Sydney University and International Editor at The Australian Financial Review. Listen to James Curran’s commentary, published in the July issue of ABR.

This week on the ABR Podcast we feature Robin Boord’s essay ‘Consolation of Clouds’, which was placed third in the 2025 Calibre Essay Prize. The essay conveys the mystery surrounding the death of a woman’s father, a pilot in the Korean War, who died unexpectedly at home after a mechanical failure on a training flight. Boord writes in poetic prose that creates narrative movement through a gradual succession of images connected by the recurring motif of sliding, strange, penetrable clouds. Robin Boord has worked as a theatre director and a psychologist. Her novel manuscript Out of Place was shortlisted for the Unpublished Manuscript Award in the 2024 South Australian Literary Awards. Here is Robin Boord with ‘Consolation of Clouds’, published in the July issue of ABR.

This week on the ABR podcast we feature Shan Windscript’s review of Bombard the Headquarters! by Linda Jaivin. Though Windscript applauds Jaivin for condensing the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of Communist China into a succinct and vivid account, Windscript argues this approach sacrifices historical nuance. Shan Windscript is a cultural historian of modern China and Lecturer in East Asian History at Monash University. Listen to Shan Windscript with ‘Mao’s mango: Cultural Revolution as history or farce’, published in the July issue of ABR.

This week on the ABR podcast we feature André Dao’s review of The Shortest History of AI by Toby Walsh. In his analysis, Dao notes an undercurrent of ‘pervasive technological solutionism’ in Walsh’s ‘core history… of technological innovations’. André Dao is a PhD candidate at the Melbourne Law School and won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, among other prizes, for his debut novel Anam (2023). Listen to André Dao with ‘A Worse World: History from the future’, published in the June issue of ABR.

This week on the ABR Podcast we feature Natasha Sholl’s essay ‘The Chirp/The Scream’, which was the runner-up in the 2025 Calibre Essay Prize. Natasha Sholl is a writer and lapsed lawyer based in Melbourne. Her work has appeared in many publications including Australian Book Review. Her first book, Found, Wanting, was published by Ultimo Press in 2022. Her essay, ‘Hold Your Nerve’, was runner-up in the 2024 Calibre Essay Prize. Listen to Natasha Sholl with ‘The Chirp/The Scream’, published in the June issue of ABR.

This week on the ABR Podcast, Kate Fullagar reviews Uprising: War in the colony of New South Wales, 1838-1844, by Stephen Gapps. Fullagar writes that Uprising is a ‘crucial contribution to our rethinking of Australian military history’. Kate Fullagar is Professor of History at Australian Catholic University, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, and Vice President of the Australian Historical Association. Her most recent book is Bennelong & Phillip: A History Unravelled. Listen to Kate Fullagar with ‘Method and message: Rethinking Australian military history’, published in the June issue of ABR.

This week on the ABR Podcast, we are delighted to present the winning essay in the 2025 Calibre Essay Prize: ‘Eucharist’ by Jeanette Mrozinski, who becomes the first American essayist to win the prestigious award. Jeanette Mrozinski has worked as a stripper and government bureaucrat, bakery girl and communications director, factory labourer, yoga instructor, and journalist. An MFA candidate in non-fiction at Washington University in St Louis, she writes about labour, class, and self-worth. Listen to Jeanette Mrozinski with ‘Eucharist’, published in the May issue of ABR.