-
5 days ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Alice Moldovan |Richard Fidler
Nathan Dunne was swimming in Hampstead Heath in London in the middle of winter in 2008 when a psychological catastrophe struck him. Nathan felt his sense of self split in two, and an unbearable pain overtook him. He was driven to attempt suicide, and endured years of misdiagnoses from doctors and medications that didn't work. Nathan didn't have the words to describe the confusion, pain and splitting of self he was experiencing. For years, water was the symbol of his undoing.
-
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.
-
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.
-
1 week ago | 
abc.net.au | Sarah Kanowski |Jennifer Leake |Nicola Harrison
When Alex Schnell was around 5 years old, playing in rock pools around Clovelly beach in Sydney, she had an alien encounter. The creature in the shallow water in front of her was a little octopus and unlike anything Alex had seen before, and instead of darting off in fear like a fish might, to Alex it felt like the octopus was genuinely curious in her.
-
1 week ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Jennifer Leake |Sarah Kanowski
When Alex Schnell was around 5 years old, playing in rock pools around Clovelly beach in Sydney, she had an alien encounter. The creature in the shallow water in front of her was a little octopus and unlike anything Alex had seen before, and instead of darting off in fear like a fish might, to Alex it felt like the octopus was genuinely curious in her.
-
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.
-
2 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Carmel Rooney |Nicola Harrison |Richard Fidler
Sean Sweeney grew up as a child of deaf adults and was the first hearing baby to be born to his mother's family in four generations. Sean first signed the word for 'bottle' to his mum at 10 months. He grew up in a tight-knit deaf community with a lot of pride in their uniquely Australian version of sign language, named Auslan in the 1980s. In his twenties, Sean rebelled against the deaf world, and began to look for a new life in the hearing one. But after eighteen years, he returned.
-
2 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Alice Moldovan |Sarah Kanowski
Claire Keegan is an Irish novelist whose books are loved by readers around the world. Her works Small Things Like These and Foster have both been made into movies. Her stories often take place in the landscape where she grew up — the farms and small towns of Wexford in Southeast Ireland. Claire was the youngest of six children, and when she was born their farmhouse had no running water and few books. Instead, Claire fell in love with horses.
-
2 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Sarah Kanowski |Nicola Harrison
Peter Godwin was born in Zimbabwe when the country was still under colonial rule. His English mother was the only doctor for thousands of kilometres and early on, Peter realised that he came second to her patients. When Peter was little, civil war broke out at home and so he was sent away to boarding school, and then conscripted by the army when he was still a teenager.
-
2 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Alice Moldovan |Sarah Kanowski
Author Rosalie Ham grew up in country NSW in a town three streets wide and three streets long. During a mouse plague, the rodents were so prolific that their droppings would appear at the bottom of the cereal packet, and the town's children — unsupervised — would chop the mice up with a downpipe in the farmyard shed. When Rosalie was a child, her mum received a devastating diagnosis, and moved out of the family home to find herself before it was too late.
