In Stay-at-Home Baby Storytime #5, Aandi guides you through “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear”.

Children's Librarian Aandi guides you through a Baby Storytime for you to deliver at home during our temporary closure. Learn how to prepare your child for a lifelong love of books, reading and learning with easy to follow steps and sing-a-longs. String a set of episodes together for an endlessly-customisable babytime.

Podcast thumbnail features a photo by Brina Blum from Unsplash.

In Stay-at-Home Baby Storytime #4, Aandi guides you through “Patty-Cake Patty-Cake”.

Children's Librarian Aandi guides you through a Baby Storytime for you to deliver at home during our temporary closure. Learn how to prepare your child for a lifelong love of books, reading and learning with easy to follow steps and sing-a-longs. String a set of episodes together for an endlessly-customisable babytime.

Podcast thumbnail features a photo by Brina Blum from Unsplash.

The Short Story Club discusses a short story every meeting, before moving on to other reading recommendations. In this episode, Connor and Tegan discuss food, feminism and fairy tales in Carmen Maria Machado’s ‘Eight Bites’ before moving on to their current isolation reading.

This discussion is best enjoyed after you've read 'Eight Bites' - you'll find the link to do so if you haven't below. A warning - the discussion touches on eating disorders and body image.

If you’d like to join The Short Story Club (currently on Zoom) book in for the morning or evening meetings through our events page at https://library.yarracity.vic.gov.au, where you’ll also find information on how to access each story. Otherwise, keep an eye on our podcast and our social media channels to follow along from home. We have stories by Kurt Vonnegut, Robbie Arnott and Ursula Le Guin coming up soon.

Carmen Maria Machado’s ‘Eight Bites’ is part of her short story collection ‘Her Body and Other Parties’. You can download it for free through Cloud Library, or access just ‘Eight Bites’ through Gulf Coast at http://gulfcoastmag.org/journal/29.2-summer/fall-2017/eight-bites/

Yarra Libraries Recommends:

Her Body and Other Parties – Carmen Maria Machado (available on Cloud Library)

The Supper Club – Lara Williams (available on Cloud Library)

Tegan recommends: Hot Dog Taste Test by Lisa Hanawalt

Connor Recommends: Call the Midwife. You can find the latest two series on ABC iview.

“It’s a story of these two best friends, the narrator and Dan, who have met each other at that time in your life when you have finally found your people. And, because you’ve found your people, you sort of throw yourselves at each other really hard…. but by the time we meet them they’ve exhausted each other. They still mean a lot to each other, but they need to change their friendship.” – Ronnie Scott

In partnership with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club, Yarra Libraries brings you this conversation between first-time-novelist Ronnie Scott and First Book Club Host Ellen Cregan. In it, they touch on Melbourne in summer, close friendship and the Fitzroy Pool.

Ronnie Scott’s debut novel, ‘The Adversary’, is a sticky, summer novel. In it, a young man in Brunswick has devoted his winter to recreational showers, staring at his phone, and speculating on the activities of his best friend and housemate, Dan. But now summer is coming, and Dan has found a boyfriend and a job, so the young man is being pushed out into the world, in search of friendship and love.

Ronnie Scott writes essays and criticism for newspapers, websites and magazines. In 2007 he founded The Lifted Brow, an independent literary magazine. He's a Lecturer in the Writing and Publishing discipline at RMIT University. ‘The Adversary’ is his first novel.

Established in 2014, the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club partners with local publishers to each month promote a new release debut book of fiction or non-fiction that KYD is gunning for everyone to read!

Through a series of events, online content, podcast coverage and profiles, the KYD First Book Club encourages wide-ranging and long-lasting conversations about these authors and their books both on and off the screen.

Thanks to Kill Your Darlings for their partnership on this event.

Yarra Libraries Recommends:

The Adversary – Ronnie Scott

Hotel du Lac – Anita Brookner (available on Cloud Library)

Cherry Beach – Laura McPhee Browne (audiobook on RB Digital)

Being Black n’ Chicken, and chips – Matt Okine (audiobook on RB Digital)

Little Stones – Elizabeth Kuiper (available on Cloud Library)

Room for a Stranger – Melanie Cheng (audiobook on RB Digital)

Witches: What Women Do Together – Sam George Allen (Audiobook available through Cloud Library)

Call Me Evie – J.P. Pomare (audiobook on RB Digital)

Beautiful Revolutionary – Laura Elizabeth Woollett (available on Cloud Library)

This is an edited recording. Our theme song is Add And by Broke For Free.

In Stay-at-Home Baby Storytime #3, Aandi guides you through “Three Little Ducks”.

Children's Librarian Aandi guides you through a Baby Storytime for you to deliver at home during our temporary closure. Learn how to prepare your child for a lifelong love of books, reading and learning with easy to follow steps and sing-a-longs. String a set of episodes together for an endlessly-customisable babytime.

Podcast thumbnail features a photo by Brina Blum from Unsplash.

The Short Story Club discusses a short story every meeting, before moving on to other reading recommendations. In this episode, Nell O’Bryan and Meaghan Dew discuss memory, music and nostalgia in Haruki Murakami’s ‘With the Beatles’ before moving on to their current isolation reading.

If you’d like to join The Short Story Club (currently on Zoom) book in for the morning or evening meetings through our events page at https://library.yarracity.vic.gov.au, where you’ll also find information on how to access each story. Otherwise, keep an eye on our podcast and our social media channels to follow along from home. In the next meeting we’ll discuss Carmen Maria Machado’s ‘Eight Bites’.

Haruki Murakami’s ‘With the Beatles’ can be downloaded through RB Digital – it’s in the February 16th issue of The New Yorker. You can also access it through The New Yorker’s website.

Nell Recommends: escaping into a world of posh English people through BBC’s Pride and Prejudice or Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’. While the latter is still in copyright in Australia you can find the 2008 adaptation on SBS on Demand. As for Jane Austen, many of her titles are available as e-books through Cloud Library. Wet t-shirts not included. She (Nell, not Jane Austen) also recommends Hannah Kent’s ‘Burial Rites’.

Meaghan Recommends: More historical fiction with ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ by George Saunders. You can find it as an e-book on Cloud Library and as an audiobook on Borrowbox. She also recommends ‘Star Crossed’ (on Cloud Library and RB Digital) or ‘The Lost Love Song’ – both from rom-com legend Minnie Darke.

In this episode Aandi walks you through the rhyme "Open, Shut Them"

Children's Librarian Aandi guides you through a Baby Storytime for you to deliver at home during our temporary closure. Learn how to prepare your child for a lifelong love of books, reading and learning with easy to follow steps and sing-a-longs. String a set of episodes together for an endlessly-customisable babytime.

Podcast thumbnail features a photo by Brina Blum from Unsplash.

Children's Librarian Aandi guides you through a Baby Storytime for you to deliver at home during our temporary closure. Learn how to prepare your child for a lifelong love of books, reading and learning with easy to follow steps and sing-a-longs.

String a set of episodes together for an endlessly-customisable babytime.

Podcast thumbnail features a photo by Brina Blum from Unsplash.

“It was a very dynamic time for Australian culture. And for writing Australian stories of all kinds; whether it’s writing in fashion, or in film, or in novels. Just sort of saying – to hell with the cultural cringe, let’s make something amazing here.” – Sally Gray

If there was ever anyone qualified to speak authoritatively about Fabulousness, it’s writer and cultural historian Dr. Sally Gray. Linking fashion, art, sexual politics and diverse urban subcultures, her latest book traces how four friends: fashion designers Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee, and artists David McDiarmid and Peter Tully, came together and formed a vibrant cultural milieu. Starting in the streets of Melbourne’s inner north, her discussion with fashion curator Laura Jocic circles the world before landing firmly home in the midst of the Whitlam election, gay liberation and the making of a distinct Australian style.

This is an edited recording. Our theme is Add And by Broke for Free.

Sally Gray

Dr Sally Gray is a writer, curator, artist, concept developer, creative producer, advocate and teacher. Her numerous cultural projects have been realised, nationally and internationally under the umbrella of the arts consultancy she founded in May 1994.

Her exhibitions – covering architecture, art, design, photography, fashion, queer cultures and cultural history – have appeared in Beijing, London, Melbourne, Sydney and regional galleries and museums in Australia. Her scholarly work as a cultural historian – writing on art, fashion and urban life – has been published in books, book chapters and journal articles.

Yarra Libraries Recommends

Friends, fashion & fabulousness : the making of an Australian style – Sally Gray

Australian style : the who's who of fashion – Lisa Teh, Thom Whilton

To note: notation across disciplines - Hannah Mathews (ed) (2017)

David McDiarmid: when this you see remember me – David Mcdiarmid (2014)

Linda Jackson's rainbow menagerie – Linda Jackson

Romance Was Born – Anna Plunkett, Luke Sales and Georgina Safe

“I hope young women read it and think ‘there’s all types of ways to be and love’” – Laura McPhee-Browne on her hopes for ‘Cherry Beach’

Laura McPhee-Browne’s debut novel, ‘Cherry Beach’ follows friends Hetty and Ness as they leave Melbourne for Toronto to live abroad for the first time. She discussed the book with Ellen Cregan at Bargoonga Nganjin, North Fitzroy Library for the February Kill Your Darlings First Book Club.

Laura McPhee-Browne is a writer and social worker living in Melbourne, on Wurundjeri land. Her short stories have been published widely in Australia. Laura also volunteers as a fiction editor for the literary magazine Verity La. ‘Cherry Beach’ is her first novel. lauramcpheebrowne.com

Established in 2014, the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club partners with local publishers to each month promote a new release debut book of fiction or non-fiction that KYD is gunning for everyone to read!

Through a series of events, online content, podcast coverage and profiles, the KYD First Book Club encourages wide-ranging and long-lasting conversations about these authors and their books both on and off the screen.

Thanks to Kill Your Darlings and Text Publishing for their involvement with this event.

Content Warning: This recording contains discussion relating to mental illness and suicide

This is an edited recording. Our theme song is Add And by Broke For Free.

Yarra Libraries Recommends

Cherry Beach – Laura McPhee-Browne

Our Magic Hour – Jennifer Down

Normal People – Sally Rooney (also available as an ebook through CloudLibrary and an e-audiobook through RB Digital)

Conversations with Friends – Sally Rooney (also available as an ebook through CloudLibrary and an e-audiobook through RB Digital)