Sofie Laguna

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**The ABR Podcast**

Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.

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2025 Peter Porter Poetry Prize Shortlist

Read by the poets

This week on The ABR Podcast we feature the 2025 Peter Porter Prize shortlisted poems, as read by the five poets, published in the January-February issue of ABR.

Recent episodes:

In conversation with Nicole Abadee about Sofie Laguna's 'Infinite Splendours'

The ABR Podcast

In today's episode, Amy Baillieu speaks to Nicole Abadee about Sofie Laguna's latest novel, Infinite Splendours. In her November issue review, Abadee reflects that Laguna 'does not shy away from confronting subject matter' and notes that Infinite Splendours represents 'new territory' for Laguna as it follows protagonist Lawrence from childhood into adulthood. Baillieu and Abadee also discuss Abadee's own podcast Books Books Books.

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Infinite Splendours by Sofie Laguna

by Nicole Abadee •

November 2020, no. 426

Nicole Abadee reviews 'Infinite Splendours' by Sofie Laguna

Sofie Laguna does not shy away from confronting subject matter. Her first adult novel, One Foot Wrong (2009), is about a young girl forced by her troubled parents into a reclusive existence. Her second, The Eye of the Sheep (2014), which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2015, tells the story of a young boy on the autism spectrum born into a family riven by poverty and violence. Her third, The Choke (2017), concerns a motherless child in danger because of her father’s criminal connections. Infinite Splendours is also about the betrayal of a child by the adults in his life, but here Laguna ventures into new territory, exploring the lasting impact of trauma on a child as he becomes a man, and whether the abused may become the abuser.

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The Choke by Sofie Laguna

by James Ley •

September 2017, no. 394

James Ley reviews 'The Choke' by Sofie Laguna

The Choke is full of holes. I mean that literally, which is also to say (since we are talking about a novel) symbolically. It contains any number of insinuating references to wounds, ditches, gaps, and voids. The primary implication of these can be grasped if one recalls that ‘nothing’ was Elizabethan slang for female genitalia. Sofie Laguna’s narrato ...

Open Page with Sofie Laguna

by Australian Book Review •

August 2015, no. 373

I love writers festivals; most of the ones I have appeared at have been for children, and they are great fun. They have given me the opportunity to meet other writers. Most of the time I work in isolation, so the festivals are wonderful. I like presenting to children. I trained originally as an actor; for a number of years I performed my picture book My Yellow Blanky to children all over Australia.

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