Has therapy come to define modern life?

In this special episode of Fully Lit, Sydney Review of Books Editor James Jiang is joined by writer and scholar Christian Gelder and award-winning essayist Eda Gunaydin to probe the depths of contemporary therapeutic culture. Together, they consider how different therapeutic practices shape our ideas and language around identity, responsibility, and personal transformation, while also reflecting on the promises and limitations of therapy itself.

The conversation offers perspectives from both the psychoanalytic and cognitive behavioural traditions, while touching on the best-selling book The Body Keeps the Score, the links between therapy and literature, and what our fascination with therapy tells us about our politics.

At its psychic core, this episode asks how contemporary culture has come to understand itself through a therapeutic lens.

Voices

James Jiang is Editor of the Sydney Review of Books.

Christian Gelder is an ARC DECRA Fellow in English and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne whose research focuses on psychoanalysis, cognitive behavioural therapy and the history of therapeutic culture.

Eda Gunaydin is an award-winning essayist, a lecturer in politics at the University of Wollongong, and the author of Root and Branch: Essays on Inheritance. She is the current Parramatta Laureate in Literature.

Credits

Fully Lit 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.

Recorded and Edited by Regina Botros.

Recorded at 2SER FM studios.

Further Reading

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Against Understanding by Bruce Fink

What Is Madness? by Darian Leader

"Self Unhelped" by Christian Gelder (Sydney Review of Books)

"Where Have All the Addicts Gone?" by Christian Gelder and Rob Boncardo (Sydney Review of Books)

Root and Branch: Essays on Inheritance by Eda Gunaydin

For more conversations about literature, ideas and contemporary culture, explore the Fully Lit back catalogue.

What does home feel like when you've spent your life searching for it? And how do stories help us make sense of identity, belonging and displacement?

In this special episode of Fully Lit, recorded live at the Addi Road Writers’ Festival, members of Dorr-e Dari present an evening of storytelling, poetry and conversation exploring Afghan Australian experiences.

The event opens with a powerful personal story from Zeynab Noori about travelling to Afghanistan for the first time and confronting the realities of life under Taliban rule. Writer, director and producer Kobra Sayyadi shares original reflections on travel, courage, beauty and self-discovery, while the performance celebrates the richness and diversity of Afghan culture beyond the narratives that so often dominate public discussion.

In conversation with writer and broadcaster Sheila Ngoc Pham, the group reflects on questions of home, migration, memory, identity and artistic practice. Together, they discuss what it means to belong across multiple countries and cultures, the challenges of representation, and the role of art in creating space for community voices.

This is a conversation about storytelling and the many ways people carry home within them.

Voices

Kobra Sayyadi is a Hazara-Afghan theatre-maker, writer, and interdisciplinary artist blending theatre, poetry, film, and audio. Her work explores feeling, belonging, and the spaces in between.

Zeynab Noori is an Afghan Hazara actor, born and raised in Iran, whose cross-cultural upbringing informs her artistic voice and perspective.

Jawad runs a plastering business, providing his services on construction sites all over Sydney. He was a member of ensemble PYT Fairfield for three years and made his debut as a performer at Griffin Theatre in the premiere production of PYT’s Tribunal.

Mahdi Mohammadi trained as a theatre director at Kabul University, where he co-founded Papyrus Theatre. Under his leadership, the company was awarded First Prize at the Afghan National Theatre Festival and toured internationally to India and Sweden.

Sheila Ngoc Pham is a writer, editor, producer, curator and researcher. Sheila previously co-directed the Addi Road Writers' Festival (2021-2023), and her other curation work includes an exhibition of Đông Hồ paintings (2019) for the State Library of NSW, and most recently, MÌNH (2023) for Fairfield City Museum and Gallery. She is the 2025 Imago Fellow at the State Library of NSW.

Credits

This episode of Fully Lit was recorded at the Addi Road Writers’ Festival on Gadigal land in Sydney.

Fully Lit 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.

Recorded and mixed by Daniel Wiggins.

What do we owe to the people we love? And how do we carry each other’s stories through time?

In this episode of Fully Lit, Chinese-Australian writer Isabelle Li joins acclaimed novelist Gail Jones to discuss The Northern Tomb, a sweeping and deeply humane novel about family, memory, obligation and belonging.

Set in northern China and spanning decades of personal and political history, the novel follows an ageing former government official, his family, and Sister Fu, the quiet carer whose compassion and attention bring their stories into focus.

Together, Li and Jones explore kinship, care, ageing, grief, friendship and the responsibilities we hold towards one another. They discuss the power of storytelling, the role of memory in shaping identity, and the ways literature can deepen our understanding of lives beyond our own experience.

At the centre of it all is a simple but profound question: how do we learn to care for one another?

This episode of Fully Lit was recorded at Gleebooks on Gadigal land in Sydney.

Voices

Isabelle Li is a Chinese Australian writer and translator whose works include the short story collection A Chinese Affair and the novel The Northern Tomb.

Gail Jones is one of Australia’s most acclaimed novelists, the author of eleven novels, whose work has been translated widely and recognised with numerous major literary awards.

Credits

This episode was recorded on Gadigal land at Sydney's Gleebooks - for more literary events like this one, see the Gleebooks events page.

Fully Lit 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.

Recorded by Gleebooks.

Mixed by Regina Botros.

Further Reading

The Northern Tomb by Isabelle Li (Puncher & Wattman, 2026)

A Chinese Affair by Isabelle Li (Margaret River Press, 2016)

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

The Selected Stories of Lu Xun

Gail Jones' latest novel is The Name of the Sister (Text, 2025)

For more conversations about fiction, storytelling and contemporary Australian writing, explore the Fully Lit back catalogue.