Latest episodes

Episode 29 – Measure

The Cat gets intangible, discussing liminal spaces with special guest Sarah Read, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Bone Weaver’s Orchard and Out of Water.

Episode 28 – Bowl

The Cat gets definitively morbid with special guest, multi-award-winning author and editor, the ever-unquiet Lee Murray.

Episode 27 – Mirror 2

The Cat wrestles with long projects and what it means to be an artist with special guest, award-winning author, photographer, graphic designer and activist, Cat Sparks.

Episode 26 – Book

The Cat goes deep, DEEP into the illimitable expanses of negative space with special guest Nathan Ballingrud, incomparable author of The Strange, Wounds, and North American Lake Monsters.

Episode 25 – AsylumFest

The Cat gets unhinged at the second live recording from AsylumFest 2022, with special guests AJ Spedding, Kat Clay, and David Schembri.

Episode 24 – Nog

The Cat gets festive with an off-the-rails Season’s Greetings special, with laconic superstar guest, Kaaron’s Christmas tree!

Episode 23 – Asylum

The Cat goes on a road trip and sets a record with special guest, author, publisher, and haunted asylum owner, Geoff Brown. Live from AsylumFest 2022!

Episode 22 – Bride

The Cat makes like The Wicker Man and gets ritualistic with special guest Kirstyn McDermott, award-winning author of Hard Places and the Never Afters novella series.

The Cat goes on stage for our very first live show at this year’s NatCon – Conflux 16 – with special guests drawn from the Hat of Mystery (a hotel conference glass with some hastily scribbled names folded up inside).

Episode 20 – Slide rule

The Cat reconnects with its purpose, turning trash into treasure with co-owner of Canberra’s legendary Green Shed, Sandie Parkes.

About the show

Let The Cat In is the podcast in which three horror writers and their guests riff on objects, inspiration, and those ideas that scratch at the door, miaowing to be let in.

Canberra-based authors Kaaron Warren, Aaron Dries and J. Ashley-Smith have been meeting up to drink wine and talk shit for ages. At a book launch in 2020, they started a conversation about stories hidden in objects, which took on a life of its own. They recorded a panel for StokerCon 2021 – Let The Cat In: three authors drinking wine and talking shit about objects and whatnot. Attendees of the Con enjoyed it so much that Kaaron, Aaron and Joseph recorded a whole bunch more, opening the conversation out to some of their favourite writers, poets and artists; inviting these creative folks to share what's inspiring them, and what they do when that cat is scratching at the door.

Guests to date include Nathan Ballingrud, Alan Baxter, JS Breukelaar, Isobelle Carmody, Brian Evenson, Kathe Koja, John Langan, Paul Mannering, Lee Murray, TR Napper, Dan O'Malley, Garth Nix, Sarah Read, Lynda E. Rucker, Melinda Smith, Cat Sparks, Paul Tremblay, Sean Williams and more!

About us

Kaaron Warren

Multi-award winning author Kaaron Warren has published five novels, seven short story collections and over 200 short stories. Her novel The Grief Hole won all three of the Australian genre awards as well as two literary awards. She was recently given the Peter McNamara Lifetime Achievement Award and was Guest of Honour at World Fantasy 2018, Stokercon 2019 and Geysercon 2019. Her most recent books include the re-release of her acclaimed novel, Slights (IFWG Australia), Tool Tales, a chapbook in collaboration with Ellen Datlow (also IFWG), and Capturing Ghosts, a writing advice chapbook from Brain Jar Press.

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Aaron Dries

By day, Australian author, artist, and award-winning filmmaker Aaron Dries works within the mental health and homelessness field. By night, he writes frightening and empathetic fiction, including the coming of rage novel House of Sighs, its sequel The Sound of His Bones Breaking, Where the Dead Go to Die (with Mark Allan Gunnells), and the highly-acclaimed novels A Place for Sinners and The Fallen Boys. His short fiction and art have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines domestically and abroad. Cut to Care, his first collection, is slated for release in 2022.

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J. Ashley-Smith

J. Ashley-Smith is a British–Australian writer of dark speculative fiction. His first book, The Attic Tragedy, won the Shirley Jackson Award. His stories have been shortlisted twice for the Australian Shadows Awards and seven times for Aurealis Awards, winning both Best Horror and Best Fantasy. His novella, Ariadne, I Love You, is available now from Meerkat Press. His short story collection The Measure of Sorrow is due for release in 2023. J gathers moth dust in the suburbs of North Canberra, tormented by the desolation of telegraph wires.

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