The Bookshelf

Kate and Cassie on stage at the 2025 Brisbane Writers Festival with authors Eric Puchner, Toni Jordan, Patrick Holland, and Zeynab Gamieldien, discussing their most recent novels and the books and writers who inspire them. This discussion was recorded in front of a live audience, just ahead of our Top 100 Books of the Century.
It was first broadcast on Friday 17 October 2025
GUESTS
Eric Puchner, novelist, academic, and short story writer, whose books include the collections Last Day on Earth and Music Through the Floor, and the novels Model Home and (his latest) Dream State
Toni Jordan, a writer whose novels include Nine Days, Our Tiny, Useless Hearts, Prettier If She Smiles More, Dinner with the Schnabels . . . and her latest, Tenderfoot
Patrick Holland is a writer and academic, and author of eight books, including the novel The Mary Smokes Boys and — his latest — Oblivion. He lives between Hong Kong and Brisbane
Zeynab Gamieldien is a writer whose first novel, The Scope of Permissibility, won the inaugural WestWords/Ultimo Prize (for emerging writers from Western Sydney); and her second novel, Learned Behaviours, has just been published
BOOKS MENTIONED BY ERIC PUCHNER
•    James Salter, Light Years
•    Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
•    Joy Williams, works
•    Willa Cather, My Ántonia
•    Jhumpa Lahiri, A Temporary Matter
•    Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
•    Evan S. Connell, Mrs. Bridge
•    César Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter
BOOKS MENTIONED BY TONI JORDAN
•    Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones
•    Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe
•    Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
•    Zadie Smith, White Teeth
•    Alexis Wright, Carpentaria
•    Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet
•    Richard Ford, Canada
BOOKS MENTIONED BY PATRICK HOLLAND
•    Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country
•    Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
•    Ernest Hemingway, 88 Poems
•    Leah Swann, Bearings
•    Felix Calvino, works
•    Brian Castro, works
•    Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse
•    Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; All the Pretty Horses
•    Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
BOOKS MENTIONED BY ZEYNAB GAMIELDIEN
•    Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
•    Tara June Winch, The Yield
•    Hisham Matar, The Return; My Friends
•    Anne Enright, The Gathering
•    Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn; Long Island
•    Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
•    Sally Rooney, Intermezzo
OTHER BOOKS AND WRITERS MENTIONED
•    J.G. Ballard, works
•    Graham Greene, The Quiet American
•    David Malouf, works
•    Patrick White, works
•    Curtis Sittenfeld, Show Don't Tell
•    David Mitchell, works
CREDITS
•    Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
•    Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett
•    Sound engineer, Steve Fieldhouse + Harvey O'Sullivan
•    Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown

The Bookshelf's Kate Evans and the Book Show's Claire Nichols joined forces onstage at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival — with a panel of international writers — to talk favourite and influential books from the 21st century, in the lead up to the inaugural Top 100 Books countdown of the twenty-first century. This live broadcast happened in May 2025 — with Emirati poet Afra Atiq, English chronicler of gay lives, Alan Hollinghurst, Argentinian purveyor of all things dark and surprising, Mariana Enriquez, and New Zealand novelist with a dystopian edge, Catherine Chidgey.
This discussion was first broadcast live on Friday 23 May 2025
For more details of the final Top 100 Books of the 21st Century countdown, follow the link here
BOOKS MENTIONED in this program
ALAN HOLLINGHURST
Alice Munro, Runaway
David Szalay, All That Man Is
Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
Bryan Washington, Lot
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These; Foster
MARIANA ENRIQUEZ
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Dennis Cooper, The Sluts
Jorge Luis Borges, works
Horacio Castellanos Moya, Senselessness
CATHERINE CHIDGEY
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
John D'Agata and Jim Fingal, The Lifespan of a Fact
Melissa Lucashenko, Edenglassie
Anna Smaill, The Chime
OTHERS
Paul Lynch, Prophet Song
Kate Grenville, The Secret River
Sarah Winman, Still Life
Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Melissa Lucashenko, Too Much Lip
Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words
Trent Dalton, Lola in the Mirror
Robbie Arnott, Limberlost
Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonder
Min Jin Lee, Pachinko
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
CREDITS
•    Presenter: Kate Evans, Claire Nichols
•    Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
•    Sound engineer: Emrys Cronin, Hamish Camilleri, Harvey O'Sullivan
•    Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Why aren't you reading more poetry? Perhaps you don't know where to begin — in which case, listen here, for a guide.
Join Kate Evans, as she is joined by acclaimed author and poet Maxine Beneba Clarke, Stella Prize-winning poet and academic Sarah Holland-Batt, much-loved broadcaster and author Daniel Browning, and best-selling author and journalist Julia Baird to discuss and read some of the poems that have shone brightest for each of them this century, as well as how the art-form has evolved.
This event was presented at the State Library of NSW in partnership with Red Room Poetry.
This event was first broadcast on 3 October 2025
POETS AND POETRY MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
•    Warsan Shire, Home
•    Adam Zagajewski, Try to Praise the Mutilated World
•    Graeme Dixon, Six Feet of Land Rights
•    Gwen Harwood, In the Park
•    Anonymous Rose, Broken World
•    Zora Howard and Joshya Bennett, Still Life with Police Sirens
•    Ali Cobby Eckermann, works
•    Simon Armitage, The Shout
•    Evelyn Araluen, decolonial poetics (avant gubba)
•    Candy Royale, works
•    Max Porter, works
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans
Producer, Kate Evans, Lisa Needham
Sound engineer, Ann Marie Debettencor + Harvey O'Sullivan
Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Colm Tóibín onstage at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival with The Bookshelf's Kate Evans — on fiction, fridges, rain, hinges, melodrama, reading, and why he can't write American dialogue so every character he writes has to be Irish (except, of course, when they're Thomas Mann and family). This is a conversation that begins in his hometown of Enniscorthy, site of his novels Nora Webster, The Blackwater Lightship, Brooklyn and Long Island — and the site of his memories and overheard conversations — and moves on to his bookshelves, writing, and the story of a tongue. Really.

In the year of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, this lively and thought-provoking discussion explores her life, legacy, and literary brilliance — her novels are charming, sure, but also radical, political, witty, and entertaining.
Presented in partnership with the State Library of NSW, this event brings together Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh from The Bookshelf, with Scott Stephens from Radio National's The Minefield, and Sophie Gee, English Professor at Princeton, Vice-Chancellor's Fellow in the humanities at the University of Sydney, and co-host of the Secret Life of Books podcast, for a conversation that delves into Austen’s sharp observations on friendship, ambition, money, love, power, and equality.
This program was first broadcast on 12 September 2025
CREDITS
Panellists: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh, Scott Stephens, Sophie Gee
Producer: Kate Evans, Amanda Roberts
Sound engineer: John Jacobs
Editors: Muditha Dias, Rhiannon Brown