Tagnon-fiction

Bruce Wolpe – Trump’s Australia

How Trumpism changed Australia and the shocking consequences for us of a second term
Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2023

Australia’s location means that the first thing we often hear or see in the morning is about what happened overnight in US politics. And it likely includes the word Trump.

Richard spoke to Bruce Wolpe about Trump’s Australia
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Serina Bird – How to Pay Your Mortgage Off in 10 Years (Even When Interest Rates are Going Up)

Major Street Publishing, Australia, 2023
Cover design Tess McCabe

This is a book which will be of interest to you, even if you aren’t paying off a mortgage or contemplating property investment. It is full of old-fashioned wisdom about the possibility of a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle, about saving versus spending and about priorities and goals.

Barbie spoke to Serina Bird about How to Pay Your Mortgage Off in 10 Years
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Waiting for Gonski – How Australia Failed its Schools

Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonner
NewSouth Publishing, UNSW Press, 2022

It was in his early years as a teacher in Canberra that Tom Greenwell began to wonder about systemic issues which might be making his job, and that of his colleagues, harder.

Like thousands of others, his school made submissions to a review of school funding initiated in 2010 by then Education Minister Julia Gillard and headed by businessman David Gonski.

Richard spoke to Tom Greenwell about Waiting for Gonski – How Australia Failed its Schools
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Harry Saddler – Questions Raised by Quolls

Affirm Press, Australia, 2022
Cover design Christa Moffitt, Christabella Designs

This gentle book sits between memoir and philosophical treatise, between science and sentiment. It raises many questions we all must consider, holding up the quoll as its optimistic example.

Barbie talks to Harry Saddler about Questions Raised by Quolls
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Carol Major – The Asparagus Wars

ES-Press, an imprint of Spineless Wonders, Australia, 2021
Cover illustration and design Bettina Kaiser and Imogen Rowe

This is a memoir, a series of almost stream of consciousness letters to the author’s dead daughter alluding to parts of her own life and their years together, including those leading up to her daughter’s death. It is an exquisitely painful and painfully exquisite work, not least because it is not fiction.

Carol Major talks about The Asparagus Wars
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Kathy Mexted – Australian Women Pilots: Amazing true stories of women in the air

NewSouth Publishing, 2020
Review and interview by Richard Scherer

It was a speech in 2016 by former New Guinea bush pilot Patricia Toole at a women pilots’ conference which inspired writer, photographer and private pilot Kathy Mexted to put together this collection of 10 stories of women pilots from the 1930s until the present day.

Richard spoke to Kathy Mexted at her hotel in Canberra about Australian Women Pilots . End music is by Kristina Olsen.
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