Espionage, Seduction and Intrigue

Rachel Kushner is the author of the novels Creation Lake, The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers and Telex from Cuba; a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K; and The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000–2020. She has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and (twice) the National Book Award in Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

Claire Nichols is the presenter of Radio National’s The Book Show and conducts interviews with the best authors from Australia and around the world. She has spent more than a decade at the ABC, with roles in television and radio news, current affairs, ABC Local Radio and at Radio National.