Emma Schwarcz set on the path to becoming an editor ten years ago, when a friend of her mother asked her if she was willing to be the handmaiden to someone else’s success. Earlier this year, she attended the Residential Editorial Program at Varuna House. The program, an Australian Publishers Association initiative, is for mid-career editors and has been described by Michael Heyward (Text Publishing) as ‘an extraordinarily valuable program. It gives editors a unique opportunity to learn more about their craft, both from their mentors and from each other.’

I spoke to Emma about what makes a good editor, the editor–author relationship and the best way to characterise the editor: as diplomat, midwife or handmaiden?

Produced by Rafiq Copeland. Music is Pompey.

Podcasts appear fortnightly. You can download the podcast here. Listen to previous podcasts here, or subscribe to the podcast feed.

Podcast roadmap: A bit of time travel to Brisbane, 1989; having a family with a wrong sense of humour; five editors inside (or outside) your head; mothers being mortifying but quotable; Cantonese lessons on where to wash; ‘There’s nothing wrong with being gay – it just means something went wrong in the womb’; getting the balance of humour and sentiment right in writing; thinking your family members are freaks; laughing at funerals; being a Best Australian Essayist; ‘It’s not like I’m going to write about my mother and vaginal worms for The Monthly‘; David Sedaris; literary journals; a surprise interruption by David Marr; falling in love with Jeff Buckley; laughing at your own jokes.

Benjamin Law is the author of The Family Law. About 23 minutes.

Download the podcast here. Podcasts appear fortnightly. You can download previous podcasts or subscribe to our podcast via iTunes here.

Produced by Rafiq Copeland. Music is Pompey.

Emmett Stinson is an American who moved to Australia in 2004 – and it was only with distance from his homeland that he could write Known Unknowns, his debut collection.

Podcast roadmap: Washington DC; corpses; Capgras syndrome; the best place to buy drugs in America; The Education of Henry Adams; spoiling the end of The Great Gatsby; failure in the American tradition; Phantoms in the Brain; the terrible ending of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; the disintegration of systems; rampant individualism; how the writing brain is informed by the editorial brain; the Federal Government’s Book Industry Strategy Group.

Visit Emmett Stinson’s blog.

Download the podcast here. Podcasts appear fortnightly. You can download previous podcasts or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.

Music is Pompey.

There’s nothing like the hospitality of a food blogger on an autumn eve. Cradling a little glass bottle of chinotto in my gloved hands, I spoke to Rachael Kendrick of Thus Bakes Zarathustra, Motor Coconut, The Vine (click on that last one for sure – I ate of that cake, people) about blogging and social media. We leapfrogged from how blogging and her PhD research on obesity interact to the ethical concerns of Twitter, how to manage attention with all the stimulation that social media offers us, Masterchef (of course) and the wild and woolly issue of how to monetise a blog.

Download podcast here. Podcasts appear fortnightly. You can download previous podcasts or subscribe via iTunes here.

Music is by Pompey.

In 1995, Joel Magarey up left his job as a journalist, and his beloved girlfriend Penny, to ‘track across the hurtling world’. Journeying to some of the most remote places in the world, Joel embarked upon an odyssey of sorts – geographical, sexual and psychological. His trek to far-flung Bolivia, Alaska and Zimbabwe entailed many challenges, among them an importunate grizzly and a petulant financial analyst from Seattle. But along the way, Joel also attempted to dislodge the claws of anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder.

I spoke to Joel about the darkness and fear of such a journey, how the gifts and conditions of our lives shape us, and – of course – his book, Exposure, which is out now. Joel is also appearing at the Town Hall Program of the Emerging Writers’ Festival.

Music by Pompey. Killings podcasts appear fortnightly.