This Writing Life

Susan Orlean is the bestselling author of eight books including Joyride, The Library Book, and the Orchid Thief, which was made into the Oscar-winning film “Adaptation”. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1992. She lives in Los Angeles.

Richard Flanagan has been described by the Washington Post as ‘one of our greatest living novelists’ and as ‘among the most versatile writers in the English language’ by the New York Review of Books. He won the Commonwealth Prize for Gould’s Book of Fish and the Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Question 7 was shortlisted for the Prix Femina étranger and the Prix du meilleur livre étranger as a novel, and won the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He is the first and only author to have ever won both the Booker and the Baillie Gifford prizes.

Charlotte Wood is the author of seven novels and three books of non-fiction. Her latest novel Stone Yard Devotional was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and named a top-10 book of 2025 by both the New York Times and The Washington Post.

Andrew Pippos is a Sydney author. His debut novel, Lucky's, won The Readings Prize for Australian Fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin award and the Prime Minister's Literary Award.

Carody Culver is the editor of Griffith Review. She's also a writer and a literary interviewer. Her work has appeared in Australian Book Review, Meanjin, Sydney Review of Books, Kill Your Darlings, Books+Publishing and more, and she's been a contributing editor for Peppermint magazine. Her chapbook, The Morgue I Think the Deader It Gets, was published by Cordite in 2022. You can find her on Substack at acriticalcondition.substack.com.