A monthly podcast about short stories written by Australian authors. Hosted by Karen Hollands, each episode features a short story read by its author followed by a conversation about their story.
Episode 15* of Australian Shorts features Gillian Hagenus. Gillian is an author, researcher and book vampire based in Magandjin, Brisbane. She holds a Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing and is a current PhD candidate at the University of Queensland. Her work has been shortlisted and longlisted for a number of awards, including the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer for her debut collection, Common Places (UQP). Gillian is also one of the organisers of the Australian Short...
30 Sept 2026
Australian Shorts Episode 14 Inga Simpson
Episode 14 of Australian Shorts features Inga Simpson. Inga is the author of six novels, including The Thinning, Willowman, and Mr Wigg, as well as the nature writing-memoir, Understory: a life with Trees and two picture books for children, The Book of Australian Trees and The Peach King. Her latest, Once We Were Wildlife is a collection of stories exploring the boundaries between the human and more-than-human worlds. Inga has PhDs in creative writing and English literature and lives on the f...
31 Aug 2026
Australian Shorts Episode 13 Tony Birch
Episode 13 of Australian Shorts features Tony Birch. Tony is the author of four novels: Women & Children, which won the 2024 The Age Fiction Book of the Year; The White Girl, winner of the 2020 NSW Premier’s Award for Indigenous Writing, and shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award; Ghost River, winner of the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing; and Blood, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2012. He has also published tw...
2 Aug 2026
Australian Shorts Episode 12 Fiona Robertson
Episode 12 of Australian Shorts features Fiona Robertson. Fiona’s short story collection If You’re Happy was shortlisted for the Richell Prize in 2018 and won the Glendower Award for an unpublished manuscript in the 2020 Queensland Literary Awards. The collection was published by UQP in 2022 and shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Literary Awards. Fiona is a writer and doctor and lives in Magandjin (Brisbane), Australia. In this episode, Fiona reads Happy Hour from h...
30 Jun 2026
Australian Shorts Episode 11 Laura Jean McKay
Episode 11 of Australian Shorts features Laura Jean McKay. Laura was the 2025 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow to Cork, Ireland and is the author of two short story collections, Holiday in Cambodia and Gunflower. Her novel The Animals in That Country won the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award, The Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021. The French translation, Les an...
31 May 2026
Australian Shorts Episode 10 Melanie Cheng
Episode 10 of Australian Shorts features Melanie Cheng. Melanie is a writer and general practitioner based in Naarm, Melbourne. Her debut short story collection, Australia Day, won the 2018 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction and her novel, Room for a Stranger, was longlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Award. Her latest novel, The Burrow, has been translated and published internationally in North America, Hungary, Spain and Turkey. It was shortlisted for several Australian awards ...
30 Apr 2026
Australian Shorts Episode 09 Alex Cothren
Episode 9 of Australian Shorts features Alex Cothren. Alex is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Flinders University. He is a winner of the Carmel Bird, William van Dyke, Griffith Review Emerging Voices and Peter Carey Awards for short fiction. His satirical story collection, Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere, was published in 2025 by Pink Shorts Press. Alex lives and works on the traditional lands of the Kaurna people. In this episode, Alex reads The Juansons from his collection and explain...
1 Apr 2026
Australian Shorts Episode 08 Cate Kennedy
Episode 8 of Australian Shorts features Cate Kennedy. Cate writes across genres and is widely published but perhaps best known as a short story author. Her two collections, Dark Roots and Like a House on Fire have been used as teaching texts on the Victorian Secondary School syllabus for several years and she works as a fiction advisor at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing program in Oregon. In this episode, Cate reads Little Plastic Shipwreck from her collection, Like...
28 Feb 2026
Australian Shorts Episode 07 Jane Rawson
Episode 7 of Australian Shorts features Jane Rawson. Jane is the author of six books, most recently the essay collection Human/Nature: On life in a wild world (New South 2025) and the speculative historical fiction novel A History of Dreams (Brio 2022) which was longlisted for the Tasmanian Literary Awards. Her essays and short stories have been published widely. Jane is the Editorial Manager of Island magazine and lives in the Huon Valley in Lutruwita, Tasmania. In Episode 7 Jane reads...
31 Jan 2026
Australian Shorts Episode 06 Kate Ryan
Episode 6 of Australian Shorts features Kate Ryan. Kate is an award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction, manuscript assessor, writing mentor and writing teacher. Her work has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies and her debut novel The Golden Book was published in 2021. Her latest novel HOUSE explores the intersection between families, architecture and emotion. In this episode Kate reads her story The Mighty have Fallen published in the Summer 2022 issue of Meanji...
30 Nov 2025
Australian Shorts Ep 05 Anne Casey-Hardy
Episode 05 of Australian Shorts features Anne Casey-Hardy. Anne began writing after a long career as a librarian and advocate for families of premature babies. In 2018, she won the Peter Carey Short Story Award for her story, Being the Mother. Since then, her short stories and poetry have been published in Meanjin, Island, Overland, Westerly, Kill Your Darlings and several anthologies. Anne’s short story collection Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls was published by Scribner/Simon & Sch...
31 Oct 2025
Australian Shorts Ep 04 Laura Elvery
Episode 4 of Australian Shorts features Laura Elvery. Laura is the author of two short story collections: Trick of the Light and Ordinary Matter. She is a past winner of the Josephine Ulrick Prize for Literature, the Margaret River Short Story Competition, the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize and the Fair Australia Prize for Fiction. Ordinary Matter won the 2021 USQ Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection. The judges described it as ‘elegant, inventive, and often deeply touching’. The c...
30 Sept 2025
Australian Shorts Episode 03 Laurie Steed
Episode 3 of Australian Shorts features Laurie Steed. Laurie’s short fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in Best Australian Stories, Award Winning Australian Writing, The Age, Meanjin, Overland, Westerly, Island and elsewhere. Laurie edited the short story anthology Shibboleth and Other Stories, published in 2016. His debut novel You Belong Here was published in 2018 and shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards. His memoir, Love, Dad, was publishe...
31 Aug 2025
Australian Shorts Episode 02 Mirandi Riwoe
Episode 2 of Australian Shorts features Mirandi Riwoe. Mirandi’s short stories have appeared in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Review of Australian Fiction, Griffith Review and Best Summer Stories. Her collection of short stories and novellas, titled The Burnished Sun won the 2022 UQP Quentin Bryce Award. On selecting The Burnished Sun, Dame Quentin Bryce says: What a remarkable and skilful writer Mirandi Riwoe is … the sheer breadth of talent showcased across this collection of fiction is...
31 Jul 2025
Australian Shorts Episode 01 Amanda O'Callaghan
Welcome to Episode 1 of Australian Shorts. This podcast series begins with Amanda O’Callaghan. Amanda has written and published many short stories and her fiction has been awarded and shortlisted in numerous contests in Australia, Ireland, and the UK. Her story collection, This Taste for Silence (UQP), was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize (UK). It was described as “a stunning achievement” by Readings’ Ellen Cregan, with stori...
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