Writer and music critic Jonathan Seidler showcases his passion for great music and compelling storytelling in All The Beautiful Things You Love, a novel that beautifully captures the messiness of love and heartbreak. It is a vivid and vibrant exploration of the things that bring us together and tear us apart, and those keepsakes that populate the wide-open spaces between where love ends and starts again.

Jonathan Seidler appears in conversation with writer and columnist Brigid Delaney.

Jonathan Seidler is an author, creative director and music critic. His work has been published frequently in The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and GQ. Jonathan launched two nationally syndicated fiction series for Broadsheet and commissioned, edited and published an anthology of nature writing. He also wrote and performed the score for Snare, officially selected for SXSW and Tribeca and most recently was music supervisor on the SBS series Latecomers. Jonathan’s first book, It’s A Shame About Ray, was adapted for an immersive live performance for Sydney Writers’ Festival. He is an Esquire columnist, where he writes weekly about the culture of men, mental health and fatherhood and co-founder of vinyl company, Impressed Recordings.

Brigid Delaney is the author of four books, a former Guardian Australia columnist, and the co-creator and associate producer of the Netflix comedy hit – Wellmania. She currently works as a political speechwriter.

Join us to celebrate the launch of Murray Middleton’s No Church in the Wild.

Named Readings’ April Fiction Book of the Month, No Church in the Wild takes place among the Flemington commission flats, following the lives of two disgruntled kids, a teacher and a cop as they embark on a police-led trip to walk the Kokoda Trail in the hope of healing the wrongs of the past.

Unshaved novelist and 2022 Age Book of the Year winner Miles Allinson will do the launching honours.

Free, but bookings are essential.

Please book here.

Step back in time with writer and broadcaster Natalie Haynes (Pandora’s Jar, Divine Might) in this special live edition of her wildly popular BBC Radio 4 show.

This comical guide to Ancient Greece and Rome sees Haynes combine comedy and conversation to breathe new life into the classics. Across four seasons she’s profiled key figures from ancient Greece and Rome, exhuming everyone from Petronius to Plato.

Laugh along with Natalie as she creates a stand-up show around a classical icon.

FANTASTICAL WORLDS. Imagine another world with the fantasy writers who are redefining the wildly popular genre.

Australian fantasy heavyweight Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom series) takes to the stage with ascending local star Shelley Parker-Chan (The Radiant Emperor duology) and global sensation Samantha Shannon (The Roots of Chaos series) to explain how they create expansive universes for their epic stories, heroes and heroines.

Suzie Miller’s disturbingly prescient play, Prima Facie, dramatises the price sexual assault victims pay for speaking out.

This blistering one-woman show wowed audiences on Broadway and the West End, winning Suzie an Olivier Award and Killing Eve favourite Jodie Comer a Tony for her performance as the brilliant young barrister who, one sickening night, finds herself thrust into the flawed justice system.

Put the courts on trial with Suzie and writer and podcaster Nicole Abadee, as they discuss Prima Facie’s adaptation into a gripping novel and screenplay set to star Cynthia Erivo.

STAGE TO PAGE. We often hear about novels being adapted for the screen or stage, but how does this work in reverse?

Panelists Jane Harrison (The Visitors), Suzie Miller (Prima Facie) and Alana Valentine (Wayside Bride) have all given new life to their acclaimed plays through novelisation. Their books take audiences from the contemporary courtroom to colonial first contact to a side street of a red-light district in 1969.

Turn adaptation upside down with these celebrated writers, in conversation with Maeve Marsden, as they discuss transforming works for the stage into works for the page.