The Wheeler Centre

‘The first person you encounter as a human being is generally your mother. That’s the first source of knowing that you have. How valuable is that? And how painful is it to lose that in circumstances outside of your control?’

In this Broadly Speaking podcast, Amani Haydar, Alice Pung and host Susan Carland discuss the extraordinary resilience mothers and children demonstrate in the face of trauma.

In her memoir The Mother Wound, artist, lawyer and advocate Amani Haydar tells the heartbreaking story of her mother’s death through a brutal act of violence perpetrated by her father. Award-winning writer Alice Pung’s latest novel, One Hundred Days, examines the faultlines of love and control in a complex mother-daughter relationship.

Both women are mothers themselves and write with nuance and compassion about the intersections and complexities of culture, class and family.

What happens when trauma intersects with motherhood – and how do mothers and children find the strength to endure, survive and thrive?

Content warning: This podcast includes discussion of family violence and other topics listeners may find confronting.

The Broadly Speaking series bookseller is Neighbourhood Books

The Broadly Speaking series is proudly supported by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and family and the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund

This conversation was originally scheduled to take place live on Monday 2 August 2021 and was cancelled in response to Victorian Government COVID-19 health advice. We are now presenting this discussion exclusively in podcast form.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Evie Wyld. Photo: Urszula Soltys.

'In the year that we've just had, where women's work is so marginalised, with housework and child care and everything, this felt like an incredible year to win... This has been the win of my career so far.'

In this episode of the Wheeler Centre podcast, listen to an in-depth conversation between 2021 Stella Prize winner Evie Wyld and 2021 Stella Prize judge Elizabeth McCarthy. Following the Prize announcement in April, Wyld joined us from her home in the UK to discuss The Bass Rock’s gothic tale of toxic masculinity, and the impact the Stella Prize continues to have on the Australian literary landscape.

Established in 2012 to combat widespread gender bias in Australian literature, the Stella Prize elevates the writing of Australian women and non-binary writers with an annual $50,000 literary prize, and offers a dynamic snapshot of the richness and diversity Australian literature has to offer.

Content warning: This conversation includes discussion of abuse, sexual assault and self-harm.

Presented in partnership with The Stella Prize

The bookseller for this event was Neighbourhood Books

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ross Garnaut

'It's not enough to go back to what we had before the pandemic recession. We've got to do better.'

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the global economy has changed drastically. As we adjust to a new normal, is it possible to recover the economy we once had? Or should we rebuild it from the ground up?

In this special podcast episode, economist Ross Garnaut discusses his roadmap for progress, policy, and diplomacy with host Prue Bentley.

In his latest book Reset: Restoring Australia after the Pandemic Recession, Garnaut makes the case for a radical overhaul of the Australian economy and argues that returning to our previous conception of ‘normal’ would be a missed opportunity.

This podcast episode is presented in partnership with Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute

This conversation was originally scheduled to take place live on Wednesday 11 August 2021 and was cancelled in response to Victorian Government health advice. We are now presenting this discussion exclusively in podcast form.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Art: Kate Banazi

Across three episodes, we’re bringing you a special audio edition of Notes, the Wheeler Centre’s digital publishing series. For this edition, participants in our 2020 podcast development programme, Signal Boost have created audio stories around the theme 'Order'.

It’s a word that brings to mind structure, organisation, command or subjugation. Think: the natural order, alphabetical order, out of order. It’s a title, descriptor, an alternative. A holy order, a tall order, or law and order? It can be a direction, or a request. Get your house in order. Take your marching orders.

In this episode, Karishma Luthria reflects on home, self-identity and nights that have you tossing and turning.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Art: Kate Banazi

Across three episodes, we’re bringing you a special audio edition of Notes, the Wheeler Centre’s digital publishing series. For this edition, participants in our 2020 podcast development programme, Signal Boost have created audio stories around the theme 'Order'.

It’s a word that brings to mind structure, organisation, command or subjugation. Think: the natural order, alphabetical order, out of order. It’s a title, descriptor, an alternative. A holy order, a tall order, or law and order? It can be a direction, or a request. Get your house in order. Take your marching orders.

In this episode, Nicole Pingon dives into her sonic memory and imagination.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Art: Kate Banazi

Across three episodes, we’re bringing you a special audio edition of Notes, the Wheeler Centre’s digital publishing series. For this edition, participants in our 2020 podcast development programme, Signal Boost have created audio stories around the theme 'Order'.

It’s a word that brings to mind structure, organisation, command or subjugation. Think: the natural order, alphabetical order, out of order. It’s a title, descriptor, an alternative. A holy order, a tall order, or law and order? It can be a direction, or a request. Get your house in order. Take your marching orders.

In this episode, Maddi Miller delves into the hidden stratigraphy of Melbourne.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Robin Wall Kimmerer and Tara June Winch

‘When a language dies, so much more than words are lost,’ the botanist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer has said. ‘Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else.’

In our Broadly Speaking talk on translation and language, we bring together two First Nations writers whose work reflects on Indigenous languages and the languages of the natural world.

Kimmerer is a professor of environmental biology at the State University of New York and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She’s also the author of the remarkable bestselling essay collection, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

In this podcast, she speaks with acclaimed Wiradjuri writer Tara June Winch, whose Miles Franklin-winning novel, The Yield, is about traditional language and the stories that words contain. Join them as they discuss how living organisms and living languages can connect us to the past and enrich our collective future.

The Broadly Speaking series is proudly supported by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and family.

We had a few technical problems while trying to record this conversation as an event, scheduled for Tuesday 27 October at 6.15pm – so we rescheduled the discussion to take place exclusively in podcast form.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode we’re talking to Katerina Bryant about her debut memoir Hysteria, a compassionate and insightful account of illness, strength and women’s stories.

‘We’re told that illness has a narrative structure, and that it ends. We're told that illness is a tragedy that is, or should, be overcome. I was trying to fit my own narrative within that structure, and it wasn't fitting. And through the act of writing, I was able to see how much of a trope that was and how, really, the experience of living with chronic mental illness like I do is not the difficult part. The difficult part is finding how to live within a world that doesn't accommodate that, and doesn't believe that it's ongoing.’

Hysteria is out now through NewSouth books.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode we’re talking to Craig Silvey about his novel Honeybee, a tender coming-of-age story about a transgender teenager called Sam, a chance encounter she has with a man called Vic, and the ways in which both lives are changed by their unlikely friendship.

‘For readers of all levels of sophistication, [dialogue] is the element of a novel that no one passes over. Everybody reads dialogue. It's so revealing of a character and it's the best way for us to understand characters – when they speak purely to us. It's a way to make them feel distinct and unique, and a way to have a text feel dynamic because we're shifting away from that narrative voice and we're introducing different tones and different rhythms. It’s a vital piece of the puzzle… and something I’ve always delighted in’.

Honeybee is out now through Allen & Unwin.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode we’re talking to Chris Flynn about his novel Mammoth, a playfully original and thought-provoking story about how a fossil collection of prehistoric creatures came to be on sale at a natural history auction in New York in 2007 (narrated by a 13,000-year-old extinct mammoth).

‘I do struggle with books that are deadly serious. And when I realised this book was going to be partially about climate change, and mankind's early influence on the climate at the end of the Ice Age, and how that has affected us ever since, I got a bit worried that it was all going to be very, very preachy … And so I wanted [Mammoth] to be a little bit lighter, a bit more humorous. I think it's a nice way to [engage people with] a serious topic – by making people smile about it.’

Mammoth is out now through UQP.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.