For all who know Brisbane, McWhirters, a once celebrated department store in Fortitude Valley, is an icon. For Melissa Fagan it is also the starting point for a remarkable exploration of her mother and grandmother’s lives, a poignant reminder of the ways in which retail stores and fashion have connected women’s lives across the decades.

Behind the dusty shop counters of an Art Deco treasure, Melissa discovered both what had been lost and what continued to shine. Her book is, ultimately, a tender exploration of self and family, speaking of the ways in which life surprises us and of how the legacies of others can truly enrich our own relationships and lives.

In his intimate ground-breaking memoir, told with wit and insight, Kerry O’Brien reflects on the big events he has observed, on lessons learned and ignored, on the foibles and strengths of the public figures who construct our world. The end result is an engrossing study of a life lived in the public eye, a life intrinsically bound up in nearly three-quarters of a century of social and political history.

Kerry is one of Australia’s most respected journalists. He has won six Walkley awards including the Gold Walkley and the Walkley for outstanding leadership in journalism. In a career spanning more than fifty years, he has worked for a wire service, newspapers, television and as a foreign correspondent. Thirty-three of those years were at the ABC where he worked on current affairs programs such asThis Day TonightandFour Corners. He was the inaugural presenter of Lateline and the editor and presenter of 7.30 for fifteen years.

Shelley discusses her recently published memoir Shadow Sisters.

During the terrifying years of Apartheid in South Africa, Shelley Davidow’s family was a crime. At a time when it was illegal for black and white people to live together, Shelley’s social activist parents took in Rosie, an abandoned black three-year-old. Rosie grew up as a beloved daughter and sister in a white household. Against the backdrop of racist laws and ever-present threats of violence, Shelley’s parents did all they could to provide a safe, happy home for their five children. But when Rosie was sixteen, devastating truths came to light, shattering the family’s understanding of the past.

'Davidow's memoir is not only a vivid, stark and resonant reminder of those days, but a rites-of-passage tale about growing up in the midst of violence and killing – as well as experiencing the pangs of first love.' Sydney Morning Herald

Gillian Triggs has had a long and diverse career in International Law. Born in London she migrated along with her parents to Australia in 1958, when she was thirteen. She attended school in Melbourne and studied law at Melbourne University, then went to Texas to do a Masters in Law, working with the Dallas Police Force on the implementation of the Civil Rights Act. She completed a doctorate a decade or so later. In 1982 she was admitted to the Supreme Court of Victoria as a barrister and solicitor. Soon after that she joined Mallesons Stephen Jaques as a consultant on International law practicing with them for ten years before joining the Melbourne Law School as a professor of International Law. While there she produced papers on a range of subjects, including the WTO, energy and resources law, the law of the sea, international criminal law, international environmental law and human rights.

In 2007 she took on the role of Dean of the University of Sydney’s Law School. In 2012, as we all know, she was appointed the President of Australia’s Human Rights Commission, a position she held for five years. She is now the Acting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and is here with us today to talk about her recently published memoir Speaking Up.

Patrick Nunn is here to talk about his recently published book The Edge of Memory, Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World.

Patrick is the author of several other books, including the popular Vanished Islands and Hidden Continents of the Pacific. He is, at present, Professor of Geography at the University of the Sunshine Coast but is well known for the work he undertook in the Pacific Islands where he was, for 25 years, part of the faculty of the University of the South Pacific, holding the positions of Professor of Oceanic Geoscience and pro-Vice Chancellor. His early work on the Quaternary geology and tectonics of many islands and island groups in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu still represents the latest word on many of these issues today.

Patrick has been a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on several occasions, and, in that role, he was a co-recipient of its 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He has also been awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland, and his world-class research in climate change has been extended with the announcement that he will be Lead Author on the ‘Small Islands’ chapter of the next Assessment Report of the IPCC, scheduled for completion in 2022.

Kristina Olsson is a Brisbane-based writer. She worked as a journalist for many years, writing for The Australian, The Courier-Mail and The Sunday Telegraph. She has written both novels and memoirs, including The China Garden and Boy, Lost, the memoir about her mother and about Kristina’s missing brother, which won the 2014 NSW Premier's Prize for nonfiction and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Just this month Simon & Schuster have chosen Kristina’s new novel, Shell, to launch the literary imprint of Scribner in Australia.

Kristina has been to Maleny several times, some of you may remember her visiting Rosetta Books in the 2000s to talk about her novel In One Skin and the book she co-wrote with Debbie Kilroy, Kilroy was here.

We begin with Josepha Dietrich whose memoir In Danger was published by UQP earlier this year. By way of introduction I’m going to take the unusual step of reading the author note from the front of her book as a way of describing her because, honestly, I can’t think of a better description:

Josie Dietrich is an English immigrant to Australia. She lives in Brisbane in the home she and her partner built on passive house principles. After coming out of a long reign as a carer, she’s worked as a research assisant for universities on projects to improve psychiatric discharge planning and women’s wellness after cancer. Her prior long-term work was in the After Hours Child Protection Unit, assessing children’s risk of harm alongside the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Unit of Victoria Police. To remain sane during this period, she flitted off overseas for months at a time to climb cliff faces while sleeping on beaches or in abandoned shepherd’s huts. After her cancer treatments finished and in light of her experience caring for her dying mother, Josie joined the advisory committee of CanSpeak Queensland as a cancer and consumer advocate.

This memoir, In Danger, is about her own journey through a diagnosis of breast cancer, following on from the death of her mother from the same disease fourteen years previously. It is not by any means a grim book, in fact it’s quite the opposite, probably, or possibly because of Josie’s familiarity with the illness and her lack of sentimentality towards it.

Gareth Evans was a representative for the Australian Labor Party in both the Senate and the House of Representatives for twenty-one years, from 1978 to 1999. During that time he served as a member of Cabinet for fourteen years in the Hawke and Keating governments, including seven and a half as Foreign Minister, a role in which, it is univerally acknowledged, he excelled.

After leaving politics he became President and CEO of the International Crisis Group from 2000 to 2009, during which period the organisation grew to become the pre-eminent international non-government organisation (NGO) working on the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict.

He is presently the Co-Chair of the international advisory organisation The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), from 2010 to 2015 he was Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Canberra-based Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, and remains the Patron and Emeritus Convenor of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. He is also the Chancellor of the Australian National University.

He has written or edited eleven books including A Cabinet Diary, Inside the Hawke-Keating Government, and the new book he discusses in this podcast Incorrigible Optimist.

In this podcast Outspoken organiser and interviewer swaps chairs and is interviewed by Kate Evans from ABC Radio National about his new novel, Hinterland, which is set in the fictional town of Winderran. Kate came to Maleny for the occasion.

Shelley Davidow is the author of Whisperings in the Blood, a memoir in which immigrant voyages, repeated from one generation to the next, form the basis of an extraordinary story that explores the heartache and emotional legacies created by those who leave their homelands forever. It tells the story of her grandfather, Jacob Frank, who leaves his village in Lithuania to sail to America, of her mother, leaving America to go to South Africa, and her own voyage repeating these and other journeys before settling in Australia. Shelley now lives on the Sunshine Coast.