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.

Earlier this month, Miscellaneous Voices #1: Australian Blog Writing was launched. The collection contains writing by Jessica Au, James Bradley, Maxine Clarke, Tiggy Johnson and Damon Young, as well as the work of many other writers. Geordie Williamson wrote in the Australian that its arrival indicated that ‘blogging is no longer a technological curiosity but an established means of communication, with its own establishment figures and young turks, its canons of merit and critical gatekeepers, and a set of advantages over the printed word that inspire utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares in equal measure.’

Since the book’s release, there has been ample discussion online – as might be expected – about the cultural role of blog writing, and its hard-to-shake reputation as print’s handmaid. I spoke to Karen Andrews, publisher at Miscellaneous Press and a blogger herself, about Miscellaneous Voices: its origins, the process of creating it, and her response to some of the criticism that has been levelled at the publication.

Download the podcast here. Killings podcasts appear fortnightly.

Music is Pompey.

Format Festival’s Academy of Words was held on 14th March. Panels were held all day at the zine space on Peel Street, Adelaide, including Criticism and Reviewing, It’s all gone Dave Eggers: the current state of literature in Australia and The Great Zine Explosion.

Clementine Ford (also a contributor to Issue One) spoke about mining the personal in her blog and freelance writing, and I spoke with Paul Callaghan about how similar writing video games is to other narrative forms of writing.

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Produced by Sam Szoke-Burke. Music by Pompey.

For the inaugural Killings podcast, I spoke with Torpedo’s editor, Chris Flynn.

Torpedo 7 was released just this week – and it’s only available in non-paper form. Chris caused a stir in local publishing channels by making Torpedo the first literary journal in Australia – and the world – to make the leap to the Amazon Kindle reading device, though you can read the journal on an iPhone or a PC as well. We spoke about how e-publishing is suited to small press publishers, the online model’s capacity for catering to overseas audiences, and how publishing roles are changing with the advent of new technology. Did you know that you can get any book on Kindle for a free two-week trial? That’s a boon for book lovers.

Download the podcast here. Podcasts will be posted fortnightly.

Visit Falcon vs Monkey, the home of Torpedo.

Music on the podcast is Pompey.