!!Updated and extended cut - Hear more from Jennifer Shahade about incredible women in Chess!! Jennifer Shahade is a two-time US Women's Chess Champion Chess Queens tells Jennifer's own story alongside those of the top female players from around the world.

The Stella Prize is now in its tenth year, beginning when a group of women in Australian publishing banded together to address the huge and unacknowledged disparity in the ways women's writing was represented in Australia. Jaclyn Booton is the Executive Director of The Stella Prize and she joins Andrew to talk about the work of The Stella Prize, the recent achievements of the Stella Count and the 2022 Shortlist announcement.

Deaf PI Caleb Zelic has always been an outsider, estranged from family and friends. But when he receives a message that his brother, Anton, is in danger, Caleb sees it as a chance at redemption. He tracks Anton down to a small, wind-punished island, where secrets run deep and resentments deeper. When a sniper starts terrorising the isolated community, the brothers must rely on each other like never before. But trust comes at a deadly price … Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Australiana takes us to the north-eastern New South Wales region around Tamworth, an area Yumna lived for many years as a teacher. Across diverse and interwoven sections Yumna weaves a tale of a region overwhelmed by drought and struggling to reconcile itself to the threat of oblivion that the lack of rain brings. Book Club is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Alice Wren is mid-flight. At the insistence of an urgent email Alice has fled Berlin, returning to Australia and her hometown of Fraser. After seventeen years the city is not what she remembers. The taxis are blue, her sister resents her disappearance and the nephew she has never met is now almost a man. As for the city of Fraser; it changes daily, shifting, dislocating and rearranging itself in unfathomable ways. Lydia and George don’t know what to make of Alice’s sudden return. Who is this woman who says she is there relative and what is the dark secret she is trying to escape from? Rhett Davis joins Andrew to discuss Hovering... Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Festivals are back and it's time to get amongst it with like minded book lovers! With book stores featuring author events and Sydney Writers Festival about to drop its 2022 programming the time to read and mingle is now! Blak & Bright Festival was established in Naarm in 2016. Making a triumphant return in 2022, the festival now features a Sydney event!

With International Women’s Day recently being marked on March 8 it was impossible to go past Eliza Reilly’s new book Sheilas. With the tagline Badass Women of Australian History, Sheilas promises to kick down the doors of history classrooms and rip the stale, pale and male textbooks from your hands delivering a powerful hit of the women that chroniclers of history forget or relegate to the footnotes. Featuring more than a dozen women across a century of Australian History, Sheilas is all the inspiration you need to go out and change your world for the better. Eliza Reilly joins Andrew to discuss Sheilas, Badass Women of Australian History

Sheila’s presents profiles of prominent women who have played important but often unheralded roles in shaping the world we live in. Beginning in the 1860’s with Mary-Ann Bug; bushranger and highway woman extraordinaire, the book intersperses badass lives with historical tidbits that serve to illuminate just how awful it was to be a woman, let alone a poor woman, or a woman of colour. The thrust of the book is that progress has not been made in a vacuum and is directly the result of people who wouldn’t sit down when they were told.

Jane Harrison is a playwright, novelist and researcher descended from the Muruwari people. Jane is also the director of Blak & Bright a First Nations Literary Festival based in Naarm (Melbourne). Blak & Bright Festival is making a triumphat return in 2022, and the festival now features a Sydney event! What - Blak & Bright Sydney Satellite event When - Saturday the 19th of March Where - Writing NSW, Callan Park, Balmain Road, Lilyfield Details - blakandbright.com.au

Sixteen year old Janet McClymont went missing weeks ago and the town of Quala in North Queensland is on edge. Parents are jumping at shadows, ferrying kids to school lest they walk too close to the canefields where Janet disappeared. Every inch of the region has been searched and the worst is feared. Tensions run high as the townspeople watch each other with suspicion. Every man in town has been questioned and while Janet could have been taken by an outsider, the townspeople cannot help but ask; what if the culprit is among them? Join me as we discover Maryrose Cuskelly’s The Cane...

Alice Wren is mid-flight. At the insistence of an urgent email Alice has fled Berlin, returning to Australia and her hometown of Fraser. After seventeen years the city is not what she remembers. The taxis are blue, her sister resents her disappearance and the nephew she has never met is now almost a man. As for the city of Fraser; it changes daily, shifting, dislocating and rearranging itself in unfathomable ways. Lydia and George don’t know what to make of Alice’s sudden return. Lydia retreats into an online sanctuary, craving the predictability and control of her digital garden. George maintains a kind of stoic silence, communicating online through text. It is the only way he can quiet the voices that flow unbidden through his head. Book Club is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Claire joined Andrew in conversation to discuss the impact of the pandemic on authors whose books have released in the last two years. In the course of their conversation they discuss the ways we interpret and understand history. The impact of wholesale lies being sold as alternate truth and even get into the workings of Claire's writing. Featuring Claire discussing her upcoming novel 'Enclave'! Join Andrew in conversation with Claire G Coleman... Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Today's show features Vanessa Len discussing her new book Only a Monster Joan was always told her family was different. Every summer she visits her mother’s family in London. From volunteering in her dream job at a museum, to the cute boy she volunteers with her holiday is just about perfect. Except Joan’s got a secret even she doesn’t know. Monsters are real and she is one. What does this mean? Well her date’s not going well and Joan has questions for her grandmother, but that’s all going to have to wait until Joan is done running for her life! Join Andrew in conversation with Vanessa Len... Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

The Cane transports the reader to the Northern Queensland canefields and back in time to the 1970’s. The town of Quala is reeling from the disappearance of sixteen year old Janet McClymont. In the weeks since Janet failed to arrive at her babysitting job the canefields have been repeatedly swept by search parties and every man is the district has been grilled over his whereabouts at the time of her disappearance. Told through a multitude of perspectives, The Cane delves into the psychology of a town on the brink. The questions of whether Janet is alive is almost secondary to the rarely spoken, ‘could have been one of us?’ Book Club is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

The Furies takes us to Queensland in the nineties. Cynthia has watched her family fall apart and is left in a world she does yet understand. Driven by forces outside her understanding she must negotiate a world that is openly hostile to her. Join me as we discover Mandy Beaumont’s The Furies...

In a very slim volume Cold Enough For Snow covers a lot of ground, both figuratively and metaphorically. The pair of mother and daughter travel around Japan, moving every few days. All the while the narrator is moving through her life and relationships as moments trigger memories. The narrator’s seeming quest has her reaching for moments and experiences and this is contrasted by the more relaxed aura of the mother who is happy to do anything. In these moments we see the narrator reflect on her education and the sacrifices her mother made to provide it. The narrator wants to return some of the wonder she has discovered but also struggles to put into words what that might be.

Do you need more books in your life? The depth and variety of Australian publishing is such that there are always more books than we can ever cover on the show. Never fear though, because the strength of Australia's publishing is closely followed by the variety of Aussie book podcasters! In a new segment Andrew will be sitting down with Australian book podcasters to find out a little bit about their shows, what they love to read and how they deal with a book nerds most scandalous problems. Joining Andrew in our first podcaster conversation is Dani Vee host of the Words & Nerds podcast. Renowned for her infectious energy and insightful questions, Dani was a natural debut for our as-yet unnamed new segment! Join Andrew in conversation with Dani Vee... Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

In Cold Enough For Snow we join a young woman and her mother on a holiday to Japan. Now living in different cities, the trip is a chance for the two to reconnect and spend time that feels increasingly spare. As they travel from temples and galleries and eat together in restaurants the young woman searches her past looking for a way to understand who she is and how as an adult she relates to her aging mother. Join Andrew in conversation with Jessica Au... Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Who Gets to Be Smart begins in Oxford. Bri Lee is visiting a friend there on a Rhodes Scholarship. As she wanders the lanes and cobbles of Oxford’s campuses Lee thinks back to Virginia Woolf decrying the iniquity that sees Women scholars living in relative squalor compared to their male peers. Woolf wrote about this iniquity, positing the solution that women needed A Room of One’s Own, and five hundred pound a year. Nearly a century later Bri Lee realises that this is not enough. That equality within the system does not address the systemic privilege and bias that props up the system, creating a framework of elitism that maintains power in the hands of a few. Where Woolf worries about the lack of money for women, Lee questions where the money comes from. In the money and power that prop up the colleges she finds a system of institutionalising education that reinforces the very systems that fund them.

The Competition centres around the Speech Makers annual conference and competition. Frances didn’t enter for the camaraderie, not the opportunity to attend workshops on timing your use of cliches. This year Speech Makers is offering $40,000 to the winner and that would go a long way to setting Frances up and convincing her parents she isn’t failing at life. Keith has mentored Frances in getting this far, but as her competition he can’t reasonably want her to win. The money would be nice, but for Keith the glory of being a Speech Makers champion would finally show people he’s got what it takes. As the competitors line up only to fall each round there’s rumblings that this year there’s more changing in Speech Makers than just prize money. Could it be that the organisation isn’t what it used to be? Join Andrew in conversation with Katherine Collette... Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

On Reckoning is part of Hachette’s On series. A collection of bite sized books exploring ideas driving our society. In On Reckoning Amy Remeikis explores the evolving public narrative around sexual assault and how survivors of sexual assault are treated. In doing so Remeikis looks at how inadequate our current ways of engaging with sexual assault survivors are and how this inadequacy is leading to a ground swell of anger that is changing the story. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Linda Jaivin is an internationally published Australian author, translator, essayist, novelist and specialist writer on China. Her new book is The Shortest History of China, and it’s a fabulously readable account of Chinese history that attempts to take us beyond the partisan headlines and explore the story of the most populous nation in the world. Join Andrew in conversation with Linda Jaivin on The Shortest History of China... Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

James Brandt didn’t look back when he got away from his rural hometown as a teenager. Now, he’s returned to Kippen for the first time in twenty years because his cousin Tony has been found dead under the local bridge. The news that Tony has left him the entire family farm triggers James’s journalistic curiosity – and his anxiety – both of which cropped up during his turbulent journey to adulthood. But it is the unexpected homophobic attack he survives that draws James into a hunt for the reasons one lonely Kippen farm boy in every generation kills himself. Standing in the way is James’s father, the town’s recently retired top cop, who is not prepared to investigate crimes no one reckons have taken place. James must use every newshound’s trick he ever learned in order to uncover the brutal truth. Felix Shannon is in conversation with Michael Burge on Tank Water... Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople