Narratives Library National Edition

Hear legendary Australian songwriter talk about his new intriguing album 'Songs From Another Life'- music based on ancient fragments , researched and arranged by  Gareth Koch with lyrics by Steve Kilbey..

Author interview and read.

An inspiring interview with permaculture legend John Barrie Button about what it feels like to be bitten by one of the most venomous snakes in the world- An Australian Tiger Snake. And then 25 years later , complete liver failure!

It seems the podcast world is fascinated with reopening cold cases  at the moment and the book 'Shark Arm',  is the re-examination of an infamous incident in 1935 in Sydney Australia in which a shark, in  an aquarium, regurgitated  a human arm. Author Kevin Meagher tells broadcaster Karena Wynn-Moylan a little of the secrets he and fellow author, Phillip roope uncovered.

The prospect of an  ever increasing drying and inflammable countryside is one Australians  are having to come to terms with. No longer just a 'dry year', 2019/2020  has brought an awareness to  Australia and the rest of the  world of what climate change is going  to wreak upon  our lives. Historically,  fire has always been present in the Australian landscape – sometimes under human control , some...

Australian Musician and keen surfer Ash Grunwald has produced  a book of interviews with people who he admires who are 'double trouble' - multi skilled musicians who also surf well, and vice-versa. Narratives interviewer Karena Wynn-Moylan turns the tables on him by interviewing him about his book but first he gives a short read from one chapter.

Radio Zid was a community radio station that continued broadcasting throughout the Bosnian war. Its presenters were snipered, bombed, starved and dehydrated ( no water or  electricity for nearly 3 years) but they continued broadcasting. driven by the knowledge that the community needed them and they needed to tell the community and the world what was happening inside the town of Sarajevo. The war...

'Eventual Poppy Day' by Libby Hathorn, is based around letters a young man sent home from the warfront in WW1, and 'A Soldier, a Dog and a Boy' is a children's picture book story about a  young man adopting a homeless dog he befriended in the warzone. Both tales are based on true stories Libby read or researched  from actual wartime reporting. TM Clarke grew up in St Africa and is now an Australia...

Romance fiction is a  multimillion dollar industry in Australia and also has some of the highest paid and most popular authors in the country from the number of authors who have international publishing deals. So, have you got a heart tugger lurking in the bottom drawer? How would you go about getting it published? Is it bettert o self publish? what do reader's think of the romance industry?

'Position doubtful' is an old surveyors map term used for areas where it is almost impossible to get a landmark for bearing. In her memoir , Kim Mahood  uses this term to apply to her memories of  the history of a homestead that used to belong to her family and her deep attachment to the land and its indigenous peoples that surround this place. Here she reads from her opening chapter and later in...

Luc SAnte is an author and critic. He is frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.  'The Other Paris' is actually  a walk through the history of Paris from 200 hundred years ago to the 20 century The Paris we know today was, in Napoleon's time, a city surrounded by a slowly destroyed rural life, where the fringes of the cities inhabitants struggled to eke out a living beyond 'The Wall'...

Hear author Jeneveive Chang as she recounts an exciting but also dangerous time she spent as a  young dancer in Shanghai in  The Good Girl of Chinatown , and Nadja Spiegelman will enter that fraught area of  the relationship between  a  highly strung  mother and her daughter in her memoir  'I'm supposed to protect you from all this'. Music tracks : 'I love you and let you go' by Gyan; 'Fire in her...

Nick earls is an Australian novel writer who has written over twenty books for both adults and children. He has won numerous awards  internationally and nationally  for his writing and two of his books ( 48 shades of brown and Perfect Skin  )have been adapted into feature films, and five into stage plays. 'Wisdom Tree; is actually a series of five novellas, subtly linked through the characters and...

  Today our edition has a science fiction theme . In 'Spark' Rachel Craw has a group of teenagers, fumbling with their own emerging feelings and identities caught up in a  tale of genetic engineering  and superheroes, James Bradley  explains the title of his work 'Clade' and reads from the opening chapter when the hero has elected to go  on a mission to Antarctica, while Krissy  Kneen in 'An uncer...

Today  our edition has a serious theme as two authors give us very different accounts of the horrors of war. Australian Artist George Gittoes has been present at so many wars I actually lost count and he corrected me when I was interviewing him. As a public speaker he is riveting His book 'Blood Mystic' is an account of just a few of the warzones he has witnessed and recorded, and of his life live...

JESSE BLACKADDER – 60 SECONDS; ASHLEY HAY – 100 SMALL LESSONS Our two authors today have set their work in tropical areas, and it is this 'sense of place' that imbues their characters trajectory.  In Jesse Blackadder's ' 60 Seconds' – a move from Tasmania to the Northern rivers of NSW  provides the backdrop to a family tragedy, while in Ashley Hay's ' 100 small lessons' the character of Lucy  has...

Lance Balchin 'Mechanica' ; Jack Heath – 'The Cut Out' ; Fleur Ferris – 'Black'.  This week three fabulous authors who are classed as 'Young Adult'- which means really, anyone over the ages of 14 will enjoy them. Lance Balchin reads from 'Mechanica' – of a  world without insects and animals, Jack Heath's 'The Cut Out' , his  protagonist also inhabits a future world, one where he is forced to act a...

Keenan Malik- 'From Fatwah to Jihad' Keenan Malik is an Indian-born British writer, lecturer and broadcaster, trained in neurobiology and the history of science . he is also a writer, lecturer and broadcaster and a  presenter of Analysis, BBC Radio 4's flagship current affairs programme and a panelist on the Moral Maze. It is 20 years since the late Ayatollah Khomeini declared that everyone involv...

Lesley Truffle –'The Fabulous  Hotel du Barry and 'The Scandalous Life of  Sacher Torte' with  Cassandra Dean –'Silk and Scars' Two fabulous romance/adult/fiction writers to while away the holidays. Lesley Truffle's heroines are feisty and lusty, and never say die no matter how grim the situation. Cassandra Dean's heroine is a poor scribe who becomes involved with a mysterious scarred, Duke. Well...

Some kids just love to read and can be found  with their nose in a book or glued to a screen e-reading any time of the day, but for some the magic of entering those other  imaginary worlds eludes them. Reading is an important skill and some parents despair that their children just don't seem interested but maybe  they just haven't found that one book that is the key . Our three authors today all w...