The Finest New Writing in Australia
What I’m Reading
This ongoing series of Australian writers delving into the authors they’re reading ran from 2011 to early 2025. Plans are underway for Meanjin‘s regular online publishing to begin again in the second half of 2026. Please stay tuned.
What I’m Reading
Michael Winkler
I’m about to read The Known Southern Land by Gabriel de Foigny (Spurl Editions, 2024, tr. Dana J. Lupo), purchased because the same publisher had I Am Not Ashamed by Barbara Payton and I noticed this curiosity while making that ...
What I’m Reading
Chloe-Gabrielle Fuller
Representations, not reality, both wildly outside comprehension and control. I cannot think of much else. What I am reading is also what I am drawing ...
What I’m Reading
Roumina Parsa
The women of my life have told me that there comes a day where you wake up and don’t recognise yourself in the mirror ...
What I’m Reading
Tyberius Larking
Reading Palestinian Walks sent me down a path of greater resistance ...
What I’m Reading
Amelia C. Winter
Trans people ought to be amplified in writing about whatever they wish to. They already do, and have done, for a long time ...
What I’m Reading
Diego Ramírez
There's a pervading sense lately that everything is the same, even though each thing presents itself as unique ...
What I’m Reading
Gareth Morgan
Grumpy with mythical teenagers, I come to you with this diatribe about finding the killer whale in the soup of the world ...
What I’m Reading
Saanjana Kapoor
You cannot stop reading stories about teenage girls, a dreamy, moody haze you somehow stumble back to. Maybe you are trying to find what you never read, maybe you are still frozen as one ...
What I’m Reading
Caitlin Farrugia
Isn’t so much of life having a shit staring up at you from your shower floor distracting you from your purpose? ...
What I’m Reading
Manisha Anjali
The red of the pōhutukawa flowers against the bluegreen of the sea. Keri Hulme’s bluegreen. Pōhutukawa and bluegreen. This is what I miss about the land of volcanoes ...
What I’m Reading
Emily Spurr
What am I reading? Where do I start with that? With the pile of books that towers over me as I sleep? The short story ‘book snacks’ I dip in and out of between books? The open articles in my ...
What I’m Reading: An Ode to the Book Club
Sara M Saleh
Gabriel seizing the illiterate man, alone and fasting in a cave, and commanding read, the man saying I can’t, Gabriel seizing him tighter, commanding read, the man gasping I don’t know how, Gabriel squeezing him so tight he couldn’t breathe, ...
What I’m Reading
Natascha Balak
Reading has become a simple luxury. Book clubs exist in the 2020s by members frantically listening to audio books at work to 'catch up' before the big night out. I've tried. I just can't do it. I was once proudly ...
What I’m Reading
Cynthia Dearborn
Since childhood I’ve been a grateful reader, an avid reader, but until fairly recently, a fretful one. I felt driven to read before I knew how. As a three-year-old in New Mexico, where my airman father was stationed, I’d watch ...
