Fully Lit
Fully Lit
Podcast Description
Welcome, or welcome back, to Sydney Review of Books podcast - now known as Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, presented by Anna Funder.
Over eight episodes, you'll hear the work of writers like Alexis Wright, Peter Carey, Patrick White, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Christina Stead and many more, with interviews and discussion from writers and critics like John Kinsella, Nicholas Jose, Jeanine Lane, Anita Heiss and others.
What is Australian literature today?
How does it connect to its roots in our recent and ancient pasts? Where is it headed?
Fully Lit is brought to you by Sydney Review of Books, Impact Studios, and the UTS Writing and Publishing program.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast explores themes of Australian literature, its connections to both recent and ancient histories, and its evolving nature. Notable episodes include discussions on prominent Australian authors like Alexis Wright and Patrick White, as well as critical commentaries on contemporary challenges in publishing and storytelling.
What is Australian literature today? How does it connect to its roots in our recent and ancient pasts? And where is it headed?
Welcome to Fully Lit: a podcast about Australian writing, where you’ll hear a new conversation between authors, critics and readers each fortnight.
In our original eight-part series, presented by Anna Funder, presents you’ll hear from John Kinsella, Nicholas Jose, Jeanine Leane, Anita Heiss and other luminaries of Australian letters as they dissect the work of Alexis Wright, Peter Carey, Patrick White, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Christina Stead and many more.
Fully Lit is brought to you by the Sydney Review of Books, Impact Studios, and the UTS Writing and Publishing program.
In this episode of Fully Lit Live, UTS alumni Judi Morison and Verity Borthwick join writer and academic Dr Claire Corbett to discuss their debut novels at the 2025 UTS Writers’ Festival.
Verity Borthwick’s Hollow Air is a psychological thriller set at a remote mining site in Far North Queensland, using isolation and an often-unseen industry to explore power, fear and uncertainty.
Judi Morison’s Secrets is a family saga spanning six decades, centred on a matriarch facing the end of her life — and a truth she has carried for sixty years — illuminating histories of incarceration, racism and intergenerational trauma.
The authors reflect on the importance of place in their storytelling, on isolation and truth-telling, and on the role UTS played in helping them develop their voices and navigate the path to publication. The episode also features readings from both novels.
Guests
Dr Claire Corbett is a writer, critic and lecturer in Creative Writing at UTS, where she teaches fiction and creative nonfiction. Her work spans literary criticism, essays and teaching, with a focus on contemporary literature, feminism and narrative form.
Judi Morison is a writer and UTS alumna whose debut novel Secrets is published by Bundyi, Simon & Schuster’s First Nations imprint.
Verity Borthwick is a writer and UTS alumna whose debut novel Hollow Air is published by Ultimo Press.
Recorded at The UTS Writers’ Festival held on November 7, 2025, to celebrate books by UTS Creative Writing staff, alumni, and students.
Credits
Fully Lit podcast is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros.
Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang.
Mixed by Siobhan Moylan & Regina Botros.
Fully Lit is made on Gadigal land.
Further reading
Critical/Mineral – Roslyn Jolly on the Australian Mining novel, a review of Verity Borthwick’s Hollow Air.
Disclaimer
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