The brief to ‘write about the city you live in’ has produced diverse books by five Australian writers. Another has just started to contemplate the process. The cities series was the brainchild of University of New South Wales Press, with Peter Timms’ Hobart the first in the series to be published, in 2009. In 2010 Matthew Condon wrote Brisbane and Delia Falconer Sydney. Sophie Cunningham’s Melbourne has just been published, and Adelaide by Kerryn Goldsworthy is due out in October. Paul Daley has just been commissioned to produce ‘Canberra’. The series will continue around the country. The authors and I conducted an email conversation about the project, of which an edited version is presented here.