Tim Flannery in conversation

Tim Flannery in conversation

Professor Tim Flannery is one of Australia’s leading writers on climate change. An internationally acclaimed scientist, explorer and conservationist, he was named Australian of the Year in 2007.

He has held various academic positions including Professor at the University of Adelaide, director of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Museum and Visiting Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

His books include Throwim Way Leg, Here on Earth, The Future Eaters and The Weather Makers. Under the Gillard government he was appointed Climate Change Commissioner, with the specific task of communicating the science of climate change to the public, explaining the reasons why it is necessary to price carbon. In this podcast Professor Flannery talks about his new book The Atmosphere of Hope, which, in the lead up to the December talks in Paris, gives an overview of where climate science is now and what can be done.

Kate Holden in conversation

Kate Holden in conversation

Kate Holden is the author of the memoirs In My Skin and The Romantic, Italian Nights and Days. In My Skin was nominated for many awards and was published in twelve countries. Her stories and columns have appeared regularly in The Age as well as The Monthly, Cleo, New Woman and the Weekend Australian.

The biography on her website begins with the tantalising entry:

I was born in Melbourne in 1972 and, apart from some time in Rome, Shanghai and London, I have always lived here. I went to progressive community schools and the University of Melbourne, where I got an Honours degree in literature and classics. I had jobs as a dish-pig in a café in a patisserie, as a hair model and in a bookshop before turning to an unexpected career in heroin addiction and, a little later, as a professional sex worker.

Kate Grenville in conversation

Kate Grenville in conversation

Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most popular and best-known writers. Her novel The Secret River won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and was short-listed for the Man Booker, the Miles Franklin and the IMPAC Awards. Her earlier novel, The Idea of Perfection, won The Orange Prize in 2001. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Lilian’s Story, Dark Places and Joan Makes History.

In this podcast she discusses her new book: One Life: My Mother's Story, a deeply moving homage to her mother by one of Australia’s finest writers.

Olivera Cimic in conversation

Olivera Cimic in conversation

Olivera Simic is the author of Surviving Peace, a Political Memoir, a heartfelt account of life before, during and after the Bosnian War and the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Simić provides a greater understanding of the Balkan Wars while ensuring we don’t forget the horrors and enduring impact of any war. Combining an academic sensibility with personal experience she describes how she found the determination to build a new life when the old one was irretrievable.

John Birmingham in conversation

John Birmingham in conversation

John has taken the radical step of publishing the three Dave Hooper books all at once (none of this business of waiting around for a year for the sequel with Mr Birmingham).

The starting point for these books is our insatiable thirst for energy… out in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil rigs are working overtime. One of them (Deepwater Horizon, if you like) has drilled too deep. But what they’ve released isn’t oil, it’s all the monsters of mythology, and I mean all of them, spewing out of holes broken through the wall between the worlds. Fortunately, or perhaps not, one of the things that emerged has got itself killed by Dave Hooper, the balding, overweight, over-sexed safety manager on the rig, and, in the moment of dying, has transferred its nature and power to him. The three novels (which Birmingham coyly states, get better with altitude) Emergence, Resistance and Ascendance follow the journey Dave has to make to save humanity, and himself.

The thing about Birmingham is that he has no, or few, pretensions. This extravagant scenario becomes, in his hands, a witty, clever, incredibly fast-paced re-working of the super-hero save-the-world-action genre.

Ellen van Neerven

Ellen van Neerven

A conversation with last year’s David Unaipon Award winning author Ellen van Neerven about her debut novel Heat and Light. Ellen’s writing has appeared widely in publications such as McSweeney’s and the Review of Australian Fiction. She works at the State Library of Queensland as part of the ‘black&write’ Indigenous writing and editing project. She’s the editor of the digital collection Writing Black: New Indigenous Writing from Australia.

Henry Reynolds in conversation

Henry Reynolds in conversation

Mr Reynolds is in conversation here about his most recent book, Forgotten War. This work draws on the many studies undertaken in recent years to tell the story of the Frontier Wars, and to ask why it is there are no official memorials or commemorations to them; indeed, why it should be that it is even more controversial to discuss them now than it was a hundred years ago. Kate Grenville writes of the book: ‘A brilliant light shone into a dark forgetfulness: ground-breaking, authoritative, compelling.'

Clare Dunn in conversation

Clare Dunn in conversation

Claire is the author of My Year Without Matches, Escaping the City in Search of the Wild. She worked for many years as a campaigner for The Wilderness Society but is now a free-lance journalist, writing for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, while studying post-graduate psychology. Claire is passionate advocate for ‘rewilding’ our inner and outer landscapes and she facilitates nature based reconnection retreats and contemporary wilderness rites of passage. She currently lives in Newcastle.