Shows
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMMonday 19 November 2012 - Deaths and DisappearancesThis week a retro Melbourne crime special!
We have a couple of books that are both more whydunit than whodunit set among the mean streets of working class Melbourne, but that's about where the similarities end.
We're starting off in 1933 with The Richmond Conspiracy by Andrew Grimes, which begins, as all good crime novels should, with a ruthless businessman found dead in a warehouse. Annamarie Reyes did some investigating and finds out what inspired the novel.
Next up Jacqui Le chats with Peter Twohig, winner of this year's Ned Kelly Award for crime fiction for his novel, The Cartographer...
2012-11-1929 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMMonday 5 November 2012 - IslandsTonight we are talking all about islands - those wonderful remote places that harbour some of the most unique landscapes and eco-systems, inspire some of the greatest literary adventures and forays into the human psyche and in their isolation can hide some of the worst abuses and dirtiest secrets.
We talk with two authors who explore this unrestricted nature of islands by drawing on their own experiences.
First up, Robert Drewe dropped by to talk with Neda Vanovac about the British nuclear tests on the Montebello islands off the WA coast in the 1950s.
Jon Doust chats with Will...
2012-11-0530 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMMonday 29 October 2012 - Into That ForestPlaywright, librettist, essayist, screenwriter, novelist, memoirist… Louis Nowra, it seems, has tried his hand at writing almost everything.
His new novel, Into That Forest, is ostensibly written for young adults, because Louis says he needed readers who could suspend their disbelief.
And why? Well, Hannah and Rebecca are two young girls in the 1880s caught in a terrible storm who end up orphaned, lost, and taken in by two Tasmanian tigers. Their years in the forest will mark their lives forever, as they spend their adulthoods trying to sing themselves back.
The story is about the brutality and kindness of...
2012-11-0129 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMMonday 22 October 2012 - How to Read a NovelistHave you ever wondered how to read a novelist? Not just what they write, but who they are? Or rather, who we think they are, reading between their lines and superimposing our own lives upon theirs? Have you ever tried to figure out what makes them tick, the layers they dress their characters in, the way they lay themselves bare and the things they keep secret?
Well, this week we have two very special interviews for you unravelling just that.
Kate Burraston speaks with the very prolific Lily Brett about her new novel, Lola Bensky, which is loosely based...
2012-10-2430 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMMonday 15 October - The Way We Were and the Way We Are (+ Supporter Drive!)This week we’re talking about home and who we are. Which is fitting, really, because this week is also Supporter Drive, and we’d like to share with you who we are here at 2SER, and fill you in on some of the things that have been going on at this station.
The next fortnight is 2SER's annual supporter drive, where we ask you to help keep us on air if you enjoy community radio and the interviews we've been bringing you. Rates start at just $35 per year for concession, $70 standard. EVERYONE who donates gets a prize, and you...
2012-10-1529 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMFinal Draft - Monday 8 October 2012 - The Middle EastIn our globetrotting world, although we're dipping into the Middle East, this is also a show about Australia. About the consuming nature of place, about living across two countries, and of going away and coming home again.
Foreign correspondent Irris Makler speaks to Will Mumford about her memoir, Hope St Jerusalem. A look at the adventure and unpredictability of working in a consuming and dangerous place like Israel.
The Yasmin Parry caught up with Alice Melike Ülgezer about her first book, The Memory of Salt. A tale of family, Turkish culture, and coming to terms with the past.
Featured m...
2012-10-1330 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMFinal Draft - Monday 24 September - Australian GothicTonight we're going for a stroll down empty suburban streets and across wide-open isolated paddocks as we have a look at what constitutes Australian gothic. It's not always haunted houses, long white dresses, and psychological thrills... or is it?
Jeanavive spoke to writer Chi Vu, who has transposed a gruesome Buddhist folktale to the immigrant Vietnamese community of 1980s Footscray in Melbourne.
And Chloe Hooper spoke with Neda about her return to fiction with The Engagement, an unsettling exploration of sexual fantasy.
And then we have Tim Burton's 1988 short film Vincent, a rhyming story about a young boy who...
2012-10-0427 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMErotic Fan Fiction - Kara KidmanKara Kidman is a writer and broadcaster. She presents FBi's Out of the Box, and the unbelieveably popular Unwatchable TV segment on Radio National Drive. She was last seen onstage at her Year Six rendition of Agadoodoo, where she starred as the pineapple who got pushed.
In this story, Hillary Clinton and a persistently rhyming Ellen DeGeneres end up at a dive bar, listening to Meatloaf.
2012-07-3010 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMErotic Fan Fiction - Jess BellamyJessica Bellamy is a playwright and Lindsay Lohan anthropologist. She also has a Hot Or Not blog called "Would Jess Like It?" which can be found by googling 'shit in a bucket'.
This is her first piece of erotic fan fiction and she's pulled out all the stops.
It's called Princess of the Pilbara.
Pairing: Gina Rinehart & Tony Abbott
2012-07-3015 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMErotic Fan Fiction - Nick CoyleNick Coyle is a writer and theatre maker whose shows have travelled to the New York Fringe Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Here he is, reading his story about when Carrie Bradshaw meets Oprah Winfrey, and fiction and reality collide.
2012-07-2910 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMAustralian Poetry Slam champion Luka Lesson | 2SER 107.3Slam poetry. It’s electrifying. At the Sydney Writers Festival four performers got up in a converted woolshed filled with cocktail tables, the back of the room filled with people standing, craning to get a look at the action. The overflow spilled into the barn next door, watching on screens as American slam poet Lemon Andersen rapped about life in New York, and as Australian playwright Benito diFonzo talked about his own personal GFC.
Joining them was Luka Lesson, Australia’s current national slam poetry champ, fresh off a three-month tour in the US.
He’s also co-director of The Ce...
2012-06-1207 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMBarry Heard's Well Done Those Men - A memoir of the Vietnam War | 2SER 107.3Barry Heard was conscripted to the army and was sent off to the Vietnam War with no idea of how it would change his life. His memoir, Well Done, Those Men charts his experience in training camp, his year in Vietnam as a radio operator, and the several decades that followed as he tried to integrate into a society that just didn't know what to do with him.
The further Barry got from the war, the worse his post-traumatic stress became, and he eventually had a nervous breakdown. Writing his memoir saw a similar outpouring of sentiment from an...
2012-05-2012 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMFinal Draft - Monday 14 November 2011 - Alex Miller on Autumn LaingNovelist Alex Miller is one of Australia’s most successful, with two Miles Franklin awards under his belt for Journey to the Stone Country and The Ancestor Game. His latest book, Autumn Laing, began as a work loosely modelled on the life of artist Sidney Nolan, but quickly morphed into something different.
The heroine, Autumn, is a cranky, fiery woman of 85, flatulent, and impatient, furious at the indignities of old age. She’s looking back on her life with no small measure of guilt. Autumn recognised the talent of artist Pat Donlon as soon as she met him, and they...
2011-11-2314 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMThe Wire - 21 November 2011 - Will the police crackdown stop the Occupy Movement? | 2SER FMThe Occupy Wall Street movement this last week in New York reached a turning point when a judge evicted protesters after several weeks of camping.
Occupations across the world have clashed with authorities, and organizers are now faced with the task of reevaluating how the movement will go forward, if at all.
I report the future of the movement in New York and Sydney.
2011-11-2105 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMFinal Draft - Monday 14 November - Diane Armstrong's 1948 AustraliaA child survivor of the Holocaust, Diane Armstrong migrated to Australia from Poland in 1948 during the postwar boom. With a long career as a journalist and novelist, in her new book she’s returned to that time.
Empire Day follows the lives of the residents of Wattle Street in Sydney, as the locals try to adapt to the unfamiliar ways of the immigrants escaping Europe.
I met with Diane to talk about how she transported herself back to the 40s, the things she remembered and the ways in which her characters took on lives of their own.
Music featured:
Sa...
2011-11-2109 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMCelluloid Dreams - Saturday 19 November - The Tall Man interviewIn 2004, Aboriginal man Cameron Doomadgee swore at a police officer in the street. 45 minutes later, he was dead in a police cell, having sustained injuries more typical seen in high-speed car crashes.
The man accused of killing him, Chris Hurley, was a police officer in Cameron’s hometown of Palm Island, a seemingly idyllic island off the coast of Queensland with one of the highest rates of crime and violence in Australia.
The investigation into Cameron’s death was politically charged as two very different elements of Australian society clashed over the tragedy of what had happened.
Journalist Chloe Hoop...
2011-11-2108 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FMFinal Draft - Monday 31 October 2011 - Kim Barker on the Taliban ShuffleAmerican journalist Kim Barker turned up in Kabul not long after 9/11 without much of an idea what she was doing.
She was swiftly swept up in the maelstrom that is the life of a foreign correspondent, doing the Taliban Shuffle between Afghanistan and Pakistan for eight years for the Chicago Tribune.
Her book chronicles the existence of journalists in war zones – always on the edge and about to crack, careening along on an adrenaline high.
Along the way she gives readers background on the region and lets them peer in on a life that saw her close friends kidnapped, he...
2011-11-0311 min
FINAL DRAFT on 2SERFD Monday 31 October 2011: Women on the MoveFor this show, we go on two different journeys across Asia with two restless women bitten by the travel bug.
Kim Barker did 'The Taliban Shuffle' as Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent for the Chicago Tribune for eight years from 2001. She lived a high-pressure life chasing suicide bombings and rigged elections. She spoke to Neda Vanovac about bluffing her way through and never losing her fear.
Steph Liong brings us the story of Australian writer Carolyn Shine, who thought moving continents would be easier than moving suburbs, and went from Bondi to Vietnam.
We also take another peek into the world...
2011-10-3129 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FM2SER FM's Razors Edge - Sri Lanka war crimes claimThis week an Australian citizen filed charges of war crimes against the Sri Lankan president before a Melbourne magistrate.
The Federal Attorney-General stopped the motion, citing President Rajapaksa’s “diplomatic immunity” as he visits Australia for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting this week.
2011-10-3105 minFINAL DRAFT on 2SERFD Monday 24 October 2011: DystopiasThis week we're talking dystopias. Think apocalypse, societal collapse, and totalitarianism.
Neda Vanovac looks at the wave of young readers gorging themselves on dystopian fiction.
Catriona Menzies-Pike talks all things grim and J.G. Ballard, author of Crash and Empire of the Sun.
Leaving all things dystopian for a bit, Kim Tan talks to Toby Leon about the television adaptaion of The Slap, based on the book by Christos Tsiolkas.
Young Adult Dystopias, featuring Alison Stewart's Days Like This, published by Penguin Books, and Maria V. Snyder's Outside In published by Harlequin Teen. Produced by Neda Vanovac.
J.G. Ballard...
2011-10-2730 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FM2SER's Final Draft - Derek Hansen - 25 July 2011When’s the last time you read an all-Australian comedy crime caper?
Author Derek Hansen thought it had been far too long. He’s cooked up a story about a drought-ravaged country town called Munni-Munni. The residents find $3 million buried by robbers, and their bank manager uses it to re-establish the town on solid economic grounds. But the criminals are out of jail and they want the money, the cops want the money, and two of Australia’s most notorious hitmen are hot on the trail.
I spoke to Derek about the value of violence, the effects of comedy, and ba...
2011-10-2708 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FM2SER's Celluloid Dreams - Beginners director Mike Mills - 20 August 2011Beginners is the new film from director Mike Mills. It's the story of graphic designer Oliver (Ewan McGregor) falling in love with Anna (Melanie Laurent).
Oliver's a solitary artist, drawing portraits of old girlfriends and rewinding memories of his past. He's grieving for his father Hal (Christopher Plummer) who has just died of cancer. Hal came out as gay in his mid-seventies shortly after the death of his wife, and spent four happy years as a gay man before getting sick.
Mike mined his personal history to create this love letter to his family. He previously worked as a...
2011-10-2610 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FM2SER's Final Draft - Monday 26 September 2011 - Joseph BraudeWhen Joseph Braude became the first-ever journalist to embed with a Moroccan police unit, beatings of suspects, curses on his apartment, and truth-dodging on the part of the authorities were all to be expected. Being involved in a covert investigation of a murder cover-up by the police, on the other hand, wasn’t.
Fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, and Farsi, Braude studied Near Eastern Languages at Yale and Arabic and Islamic history at Princeton. But when a muder case file fell into his lap and the victim’s family declared their conviction that the police were covering something up, Braude foun...
2011-10-2512 min
Neda Vanovac's Podcast - 2ser FM2SER's Final Draft - Monday 24 October 2011 - Teen DystopiasWith the film adaptation of the bestselling trilogy The Hunger Games in production, the boom in teen dystopian fiction is undeniable.
But where does this interest in bleak and brutal futuristic societies come from?
I spoke to two young adult dystopian writers to find out why the genre is so important, the importance of strong heroines, and the pervasiveness of fascist dictatorships.
Maria V. Snyder is author of Outside In, published by Harlequin Teen
Alison Stewart is author of Days Like This, published by Penguin Books Australia
This podcast was first broadcast on 2SER FM, 107.3
On the weekly book...
2011-10-2508 min
THE FOURTH ESTATEEpisode 33 - 30/9/11-3/10/11This week on the show:
The landmark decision handed down by Federal Court judge, MORDY BROMBERG, found controversial opinion writer, ANDREW BOLT, and his employer, The Herald and Weekly Times, guilty of publishing discriminatory material, questioning the validity of fair-skinned Aborigines in 2009.
CRAIG LONGMAN spoke to one of the case’s applicants, DR MARK MCMILAN about his reactions over the proceedings and eventual outcome, which questioned the professionalism of Bolt as a journalist.
MIG CALDWELL touched base with Australia’s only remote hub access to the sixth annual, UNITED NATIONS INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM, in Nairobi, Kenya, via the live stre...
2011-10-0229 minFINAL DRAFT on 2SERFD Monday September 26 2011: Joseph Braude and Anna FunderThis week, two authors who deal in intrigue, bravery and betrayal under authoritarian regimes.
First we hear from Joseph Braude, the first ever journalist allowed to embed with a unit of the Moroccan police. And then, Rochelle Fernandez chats with Anna Funder about her latest novel, All that I am – set in the beginning of the Nazi rise to power.
Joseph Braude, The Honoured Dead: A Story Of Friendship, Murder and the Underbelly of the Arab World, published by Scribe. Interview by Neda Vanovac.
Anna Funder, All That I Am, published by Hamish Hamilton – interview by Rochelle Fernandez.
Ben Jenkins and...
2011-09-2633 minFINAL DRAFT on 2SERFD Monday 12 September 2011: Re-imagining Australian historyTonight a show all about re-visiting and re-imagining Australian history, we talk with two authors who have taken inspiration from key figures and events in the history of this country for their new novels.
First up, the controversial dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975 is the basis of Nicholas Hasluck new political thriller, Neda Vanovac speaks with him about family, politics and the Cold War.
We also hear from author and actor, Peter Docker about his second novel, The Waterboys, set in an apocalyptic future in a continent caught up in a violent struggle for control of water. I...
2011-09-1228 minFINAL DRAFT on 2SERFD Monday August 1 2011: Crime fictionThis week we are exploring the wonderful world of crime fiction – the crims, the heists and the cops that catch them.
Most of the time we draw our crime reading from the international fare – dominated for a long time by the Brits, we cut our teeth on Agatha Christie and moved on to the proper novels of PD James, there are the delicious tales of Donna Leon’s Venetian Brunetti series, the terrifying tales of Swedish Henning Mankle. But what about Aussie fiction? Drawing on our criminal past and the harshness of the landscape, Australian crime writers are making their mark.
...
2011-08-0730 min