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1 week ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Sarah Kanowski
Irish novelist Colm Toibin has always been open to where life can unexpectedly take him, and the excitement that comes with that kind of freedom. His first big move was from rural Ireland to Dublin after his father died when he was young. Then, it was off to experience the wild hedonism and sexual liberation of post-Franco Spain. Since then, he's journeyed to Sudan, Los Angeles, New York and beyond.
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1 week ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
Hilde Hinton's upbringing was marked by the shocking death of her mother when Hilde was just 12 years old. Despite the great grief, there was also a sense of relief for Hilde. She shielded her younger siblings, Samuel and Connie Johnson, from the truth of how and why their mother died. But when Connie also died, decades later of cancer, Hilde was propelled into writing her first novel, in between shifts as a prison officer.
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1 week ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Sarah Kanowski
Ji Wallace was an energetic only child growing up on a bush block in suburban Brisbane when his parents brought home a trampoline to keep him occupied. Ji learned how to flip by that afternoon, and found he had a real talent. A couple of years later, he was a national champion in gymnastics. Ji managed to make a career out of bouncing around, representing Australia at the Olympics and then joining Cirque Du Soleil as an acrobat.
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3 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
When Hannah Kent arrived in Iceland as an exchange student in 2003, her arrival was a difficult one. On her first night in the country, she found herself stranded late at night at Keflavik Airport and desperately homesick. But within weeks, Iceland had begun to change young Hannah. She became entranced with the haunting story of accused murderer and domestic servant Agnes Magnusdottir, who became the last woman executed in Iceland.
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3 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Sarah Kanowski
When Jemma Sbeg started recording a podcast in the back of her Subaru about her quarter life crisis, she had no idea just how many people she would reach. But other people her age were desperate for guidance through their 20s - a decade a lot of us romanticise before we get there, and after we leave. It's a decade of massive growth for humans, when we make big decisions about relationships, careers and our own identities, but Jemma felt like she had no idea HOW to make the right choices.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
Adam Kay was not far off qualifying as an obstetric consultant in the United Kingdom, when a caesarean section on his labour ward went catastrophically wrong. He couldn't face experiencing another tragedy like it, nor the blunt response from his boss in the aftermath, and so he quit doctoring altogether. Adam took a radical inventory of his life, reassessing his goals, his dreams and his relationships and completely up-ending the conventional life he had felt backed into.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Carmel Rooney |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
In 2007, Jeremy Austin was asked by the Royal Australian Navy to help them identify the remains of an unknown sailor from World War II. The sailor was a crewman on HMAS Sydney, which fought a fierce battle with a German warship off the coast of WA in 1941. Both ships sank and every Australian crewman on board was killed. But months after the battle, the remains of a sailor from HMAS Sydney were found floating on a life raft near Christmas Island.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Sarah Kanowski
Angelica Ojinnaka-Psillakis has achieved a lot in her young life. She is a social researcher at Western Sydney University, she has represented Australia at the United Nations, she advices groups like UNESCO and a couple of years ago she was awarded the NSW Premier's Youth Medal. But for her family, Angelica's greatest achievement is learning to swim as an adult.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
Simon Tancred fell in love with Italy as a young man, and set up a job for himself leading hikes and tours across the country, and into the Alps. So Simon was familiar with the old trails and passes that crisscross the mountains, and which have been used for hundreds of years by shepherds, traders and travellers. But one day, someone approached him with the unknown story of how a group of Australian prisoners of war from the Second World War escaped from Italy to freedom in neutral Switzerland.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Sarah Kanowski |Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris
Loribelle Spirovski grew up in the Philippines, with her mum and her extended Filipino family. Her Serbian father, whom she had never met, was in Australia, driving taxis and waiting for the visa that would allow him to bring Loribelle and her mum to join him. Loribelle didn't meet her father until she was 7 years old, and when she saw him for the first time at Manila Airport, she was shocked by how hairy his arms were and the way he smelled just like she did.
