Steven Amsterdam is the author of acclaimed novel Things We Didn’t See Coming, and his new book, What the Family Needed, has been called ‘a wonderfully fresh perspective on families’, as well as ‘a probing exploration of familial love and forbearance’.

In What the Family Needed, members of a family are granted superpowers: invisibility, the power of flight, and so on. We asked Steven: well, what if you did have superpowers? What would you do? What power would you want to have?

Produced by Sam Szoke-Burke.

Kill Your Darlings podcasts appear monthly. Music is Pompey and Sam Szoke-Burke. Subscribe to the Kill Your Darlings podcast via iTunes or the podcast feed.

Steven Amsterdam is the author of acclaimed novel Things We Didn’t See Coming, and his new book, What the Family Needed, has been called ‘a wonderfully fresh perspective on families’, as well as ‘a probing exploration of familial love and forbearance’.

In What the Family Needed, members of a family are granted superpowers: invisibility, the power of flight, and so on. We asked Steven: well, what if you did have superpowers? What would you do? What power would you want to have?

Produced by Sam Szoke-Burke.

Kill Your Darlings podcasts appear monthly. Music is Pompey and Sam Szoke-Burke. Subscribe to the Kill Your Darlings podcast via iTunes or the podcast feed.

No, you haven’t accidentally stumbled into the eighties: the Kill Your Darlings Culture Club podcast is where we get together with some of our favourite people to discuss cultural items, be they books, plays or films.

This time around, we are attacking Miguel de Cervantes’ masterwork Don Quixote – that behemoth of literature, often called the greatest of all novels. It’s the work we can thank for giving us the word ‘quixotic’, and which features one of literature’s greatest characters of all time: Don Quixote himself, a man both wise and mad.

Tilting at windmills with me are two very special guests: Caro Cooper, editor at Text Publishing, and Ronnie Scott, editor of The Lifted Brow.

Sit down with a glass of red or a cup of tea and join us in our discussion. We recommend having read Don Quixote before listening to the podcast – but don’t worry, we don’t spoil the dénouement, so you can also listen along if you haven’t read the book.

Thanks to our friends at Vintage for copies of Don Quixote. Produced by Sam Szoke-Burke.

Kill Your Darlings podcasts appear monthly. Music is Pompey and Sam Szoke-Burke. Subscribe to the Kill Your Darlings podcast via iTunes or the podcast feed.

It’s 1930. Winsome McLintock is a convent girl about to marry a man she barely knows, and she will follow him to Rangoon, the then capital of Burma. Rangoon is a rich and exciting city, but it’s also full of tension – the wealthy British residents live luxurious colonial lifestyles while riots break out on the streets. It’s amongst all this that Winsome is discovering the nature of desire and the complexity of identity.

For this Kill Your Darlings podcast, we speak to Michelle Aung Thin about her debut novel, The Monsoon Bride.

Produced by Sam Szoke-Burke.

Kill Your Darlings podcasts appear monthly. Music is Pompey and Sam Szoke-Burke. Download the podcast here. Subscribe via iTunes or the podcast feed.

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar has its share of memorable lines – to this day we beware the Ides of March or beseech our friends, Romans and countrymen to hear us. But though it’s sometimes thought of as the Shakespeare’s boring toga story, its absorbing tale of power, friendship and betrayal resurfaces again and again. The politically motivated murder of Caesar has resonated with audiences throughout history, and for Australians the Labor party leadership spill has provided a potent backdrop for the Bell Shakespeare production of Julius Caesar.

For our September podcast, we speak to actor Alex Menglet, who plays Caesar in the Bell Shakespeare production. Julius Caesar is playing in theatres nationally until November 26.

Produced by Sam Szoke-Burke.

Kill Your Darlings podcasts appear monthly. Music is Pompey and Sam Szoke-Burke. Download the podcast here. Subscribe via iTunes or the podcast feed.

Picture this: a young Australian woman is waiting at the traffic lights in East Berlin when a tall man with curly hair asks her if she likes strawberries. She says yes, a seemingly small decision that leads to bigger ones, decisions so big that her life changes forever. This is how Melbourne writer Melanie Joosten’s debut novel Berlin Syndrome begins, and we’re delighted to present our interview with Joosten in our August podcast.

About 17 minutes. Produced by Sam Szoke-Burke.

Kill Your Darlings podcasts appear monthly. Music is Pompey and Sam Szoke-Burke. Download the podcast here. Subscribe via iTunes or the podcast feed.

Simon and his parents are on a family holiday and land in a small town called Reception. The town both lives up to its name and makes a mockery of it; the young boy finds new friends, but his parents go missing. The smaller a town, the more you have to bury your secrets – but not your stories.

Christopher Currie is one of those people you get the sense has always had stories to tell. His novella Dearly Departed was published in 2007, and in March 2008 he started a blog called Furious Horses, where he posted a new short story every day. We spoke with Currie about his debut novel The Ottoman Motel, small towns, what part emotion plays in writing, and balancing poetry and story.

About 20 minutes. Produced by Sam Szoke-Burke.

Kill Your Darlings podcasts appear monthly. Music is Pompey and Sam Szoke-Burke. Download the podcast here. Subscribe via iTunes or the podcast feed.

Meg Mundell’s Black Glass envisions a future Melbourne where individuals without official documentation are relegated to the socioeconomic margins and the relationship between the public and private aspects of our lives has been irrevocably blurred. In among all this, two ‘undoc’ sisters, Tally and Grace, have been separated following the death of their father and thrust into the city to fend for themselves. Meg has been published widely in Australian newspapers, journals and magazines, including The Age, The Monthly, Meanjin, The Best Australian Stories 2010, The Sleepers Almanac, harvest and The Big Issue. Black Glass won the 2007 D.J. (Dinny) O’Hearn Memorial Fellowship and was shortlisted for the 2010 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize.

We spoke to Meg about her vision of a city where everyone is watching.

About 20 minutes. Produced by Sam Szoke-Burke.

Kill Your Darlings podcasts appear monthly. Music is Pompey. Download the podcast here. Subscribe via iTunes or the podcast feed.

No, you haven’t accidentally stumbled into the eighties: the Kill Your Darlings Culture Club podcast is where we get together with some of our favourite writers and thinkers to discuss texts, be they books, plays or films. For the inaugural Culture Club podcast, I’m joined by Anna Krien, author of Into the Woods and Lorelei Vashti, pop culture writer and editor extraordinaire.

We’re discussing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned, which tells the tale of Jazz Age lovers Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert. Money falls through their fingers like water, and they mark their days with parties and dancing. First published in 1922, it’s a fascinating and uneven precursor to Fitzgerald’s master works, The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night.

Sit down with a glass of red (or a cup of tea) and join us in our discussion. We recommend having read The Beautiful and Damned before listening to the podcast – but don’t worry, we don’t spoil the dénouement, so you can also listen if you haven’t read the book.

Thanks to Penguin Australia for the books. About 40 minutes. Produced by Ronald Koo.

Kill Your Darlings podcasts appear monthly. Music is Pompey. Download the podcast here. Subscribe via iTunes or the podcast feed.

Back in 2005, the first book published by Sleepers Publishing was the first ever Sleepers Almanac, a collection of short fiction by writers including Cate Kennedy and Adam Ford. Now, in 2010, the sixth Sleepers Almanac has arrived – not only in book form, but also as an iPhone app that includes every story ever published in an Almanac. I spoke to Zoe Dattner, one half of the dynamic Sleepers Publishing team.

Podcast roadmap: laborious labours of love – a potted history of Sleepers Publishing – things that make you feel happy – things that make you feel something – the reading experience unlike any other reading experience – ‘there’s this thing about Australia that wants to see itself put on the map’ – Will Eaves, Arts Editor of the Times Literary Supplement – how much it costs to create an iPhone app – ‘I used to despair that all these people weren’t reading, they were playing with their phones’ – ‘To get our money back, we’d probably have to sell 10,000 apps’ – literary community

About 20 minutes. Produced by Estelle Tang.

Kill Your Darlings podcasts appear monthly. Music is Pompey. Download the podcast here. Subscribe via iTunes or the podcast feed.