Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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Jean Kittson’s warm and witty practical guide is a one-stop shop for information on how to support your ageing loved ones: how to protect their health and wellbeing, keep them safe and secure, and enable them to be self-determining and independent for as long as possible. Compelled to discuss some of life’s most confronting questions, Jean shares heartfelt, personal stories alongside expert advice.

In this Conversations from Byron podcast, Jean talks with fellow author and comedian Mandy Nolan about what she learned throughout the writing of this book. Jean shares some of her own family’s experiences, and talks us through the complex aged care system in Australia. Together, Mandy and Jean consider how we might re-frame the way we think about caring for our elderly parents.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

Listen Now

2038. On a remote island off the Pacific coast of British Columbia stands the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral, one of the world’s last forests. Wealthy tourists flock from all corners of the dust-choked globe to see the spectacle and remember what once was. But even as they breathe in the fresh air and pose for photographs amidst the greenery, guide Jake knows that the forest is dying, though her bosses won’t admit it.

1908. Two passenger locomotives meet head-on. The only survivors are two young boys, who take refuge in a trapper’s cabin in a forest on the edge of town. In twenty-six years, one of them, now a recluse, will find an abandoned baby — another child of Greenwood — setting off a series of events that will change the course of his life, and the lives of those around him.

Structured like the rings of a tree, this remarkable novel moves from the future to the present to the past, and back again, to tell the story of one family and their enduring connection to the place that brought them together.

In this Conversations from Byron podcast, Michael Christie speaks with Sophie Cunningham about the interconnectedness of people and nature, about families, relationships and love, and about his and Sophie’s shared obsession with trees.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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Tegan Bennett Daylight has led a life in books – as a writer, a teacher and a critic, but first and foremost as a reader.

In this deeply insightful and intimate work, Daylight describes how her reading has nourished her life, and how life has informed her reading. In both, she shows us that it’s the small points of connection – the details – that really matter: what we notice when someone close to us dies, when we give birth, when we make friends. In life’s disasters and delights, the details are what we can share and compare and carry with us.

In this Conversations from Byron podcast, Tegan talks with long-time friend and writing confidant Charlotte Wood about her love of books. They touch on the varied subjects of Tegan’s essays, from her mother’s influence on her reading life, to childhood and its aftermath (as in her celebrated essay ‘Vagina’), the authors who have shaped her, and the power of language to spark joy.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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Narrated by a 13,000-year-old extinct mammoth, this is the (mostly) true story of how a collection of prehistoric creatures came to be on sale at a natural history auction in New York in 2007. By tracing how and when these fossils were unearthed, Mammoth leads us on a funny and fascinating journey from the Pleistocene epoch to nineteenth-century America and beyond, revealing how ideas about science and religion have shaped our world.

With our planet on the brink of calamitous climate change, Mammoth scrutinises humanity’s role in the destruction of the natural world while also offering a message of hope.

In this Conversations from Byron podcast, Tony Birch talks with friend and author Chris Flynn about the writing of Mammoth. Their candid discussion touches on many subjects, including Chris’ Irish upbringing, climate change, fossils, world leaders, and the role of humour in climate fiction.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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Life in a troubled neighbourhood demands too much too young. But Sonny wouldn’t really know.

Watching the world from her bedroom window, she exists only in second-hand romance novels and falls for any fast-food employee who happens to spare her a glance.

Everything changes with the return of Vince, a boy who became a legend after he was hauled away in handcuffs at fourteen. Sonny and Vince used to be childhood friends. But with all that happened in-between, childhood seems so long ago. It will take two years of juvie, an inebriated grandmother and a porn stash for them to meet again.

In this Conversations from Byron podcast, Vivian talks with friend and Executive Director of Story Factory, Cath Keenan, about being published at 19, and how the stories she was told as a child inspired this novel.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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Gabriel Fox, the young son of an old English house, arrives in a land both ancient and new.

Drawn by the promise of his heart’s desire, and compelled to distance himself from pain at home, Gabriel begins his quest into Van Diemen’s Land.

His guide, a Cannibal who is not all he seems, leads him north where Gabriel might free himself of his distracting burden and seek the woman he must find. As Gabriel traverses this wild country, he uncovers new truths buried within his own memory.

In this Conversations from Byron podcast, winner of the 2020 Australian Vogel Literary Prize, Kate Kruimink speaks with fellow Vogel shortlister Emily Brugman about the characters and themes of her novel, about the experience of winning the Vogel, and where her love of literature comes from.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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Christos Tsiolkas’ stunning new novel Damascus is a work of soaring ambition and achievement, of immense power and epic scope, taking as its subject nothing less than events surrounding the birth and establishment of the Christian church. Based around the gospels and letters of St Paul, and focusing on characters one and two generations on from the death of Christ, as well as Paul (Saul) himself, Damascus nevertheless explores the themes that have always obsessed Tsiolkas as a writer: class, religion, masculinity, patriarchy, colonisation, exile; the ways in which nations, societies, communities, families and individuals are united and divided – it’s all here, the contemporary and urgent questions, perennial concerns made vivid and visceral.

In Damascus, Tsiolkas has written a masterpiece of imagination and transformation: an historical novel of immense power and an unflinching dissection of doubt and faith, tyranny and revolution, and cruelty and sacrifice.

Join Christos as he speaks candidly with fellow author and long-time friend Malcolm Knox about his own winding path to Damascus.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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The lives of three women weave together across four centuries in the dazzling new book from Evie Wyld, winner of the Miles Franklin Award.

Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has for centuries watched over the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, to each other.

Each woman’s choices are circumscribed, in ways big and small, by the men in their lives. But in sisterhood there is the hope of survival and new life. Intricately crafted and compulsively readable, The Bass Rock burns bright with anger and love.

In this Conversations from Byron podcast, Evie speaks with Nicole Abadee about the creation of her three female protagonists, and about violence against women both in the book and in the world around us.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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