In the evolving media landscape, storytelling has embraced podcasts, merging radio's intimacy with digital flexibility. This blog explores a media professional's seamless shift to podcasting, highlighting the challenges and rewards of blending literary passion with media production. Discover the art of creating engaging content and podcasting's impact on creators and listeners.
Hey Kate, thanks again for speaking with me! Firstly, could you tell me about ABC’s
The Bookshelf? Are you a big reader prior to your role there, and how does melding
your passion with your profession affect your own relationship to leisure reading
and/or books?
The Bookshelf is a weekly book review program, which I present alongside Cassie
McCullagh, and every week two guest reader-reviewers. We review three new works of fiction each week, both Australian and international (including works in translation), and try to review them very close to release.
And yes, I’ve always been a big reader and luckily I’ve always been a fast reader. Even so, reading for a deadline, as well as reading with an eye to talking about the book, identifying ideas, themes, style, etc, not to mention keeping track of the names of characters, when and where things are happening, means that I now read with a pad of post-it notes and a pen in hand.
Even so, the biggest anxiety each week is trying to work out whether we’ve selected the right books, the right mix of books, what we’re claiming about both writing and reading. We have to make those selections at least six weeks ahead of broadcast – and that does indeed tie me in knots.
But what that does to my own reading? Well, it blurs all the lines, constantly, as I always have a TBR pile. It does mean I also have a wistful TBR pile, of books I’ve missed, or really want to get to, or worry I won’t get to. And I used to be a reader, and don’t have as much time for that.
I’m also interested in how you came to work as a presenter of a podcast. Have you
always wanted to work in the media and what are some of the biggest changes and
challenges you’ve faced throughout your career?
The Bookshelf is both a broadcast offering (on ABC Radio National) and a podcast, so my career has always involved a melding of the two, especially because ABC RN led the way into podcasting 20+ years ago, when all its radio programs were first available online and then as podcasts. Which partly answers your next question.
But as to how it came about. I’m not a trained journo and didn’t come through a newsroom or CAFF training. Instead, I started out in community radio, as a volunteer, working on a history program on 2SER in Sydney. I did this for 9 years, and in that time also started as a freelancer, part timer and then eventually on staff at the ABC. And I really started out as a history specialist – making features etc, and then working as a producer on anything and everything. So the challenge I guess was about jumping at every opportunity, and doing things that weren’t exactly in my wheelhouse.
Eventually, that lead to fill-in roles, presenter gigs, and (especially) being both producer and interviewer on various books and arts programs (all of which were both broadcast and podcast), leading up to the co-host role on the Bookshelf. (The show kicked off in 2018.)
What makes podcasting as a medium unique? And how have your previous
experience in various roles helped you here?
Podcasting is so intimate. It’s that lovely combination of speaking to many people, but also speaking just to you, that one listener, right in your ear. Radio offers that too, but the flexibility of podcasting, where you can listen whenever and wherever you like, is really something.
How does my own experience feed into that? In lots of different ways. Before I worked in radio, I worked in universities as a researcher, and I also completed postgraduate history degrees while working at the ABC. This meant that research was something I understood, while also giving me an intellectual framework around ‘public history’. Not just the ideas and the research, but how you communicate them. I also had a few years working in publishing as an editor, and doing freelance editing, historical work, and bits and pieces, which also meant that writing was something I could do.
I’ve also long had the experience, which I love, of interviewing writers onstage at writers festivals. Speaking to creative, big thinkers, onstage and in depth. What an absolute joy that is. It leaves you fizzing with ideas.
But what else I really love about that, which feeds directly into the whole podcasting experience, is the hands-on, practical and creative experience of editing, shaping, and working with sound engineers and colleagues to make it into something that then goes out into the world. It’s that mixture of ideas and practice that brings it home for me.
You’ve also mentioned that it will be a busy few weeks for you. What does your media
cycle look like currently, and are there particular dates and events that you need to
plan and produce content for?
Yikes. Ok. A couple of things. We’re never ‘just’ one thing in the media, are we? It’s not just (say) reading three books a week and having a leisurely conversation with reviewers about them. There’s all that planning, liaising with publishers, wrangling books, studios, access and times. But also, as well as co-hosting the Bookshelf, I have other commitments – writing reviews for ABC Digital’s review column every month, appearing regularly on ABC TV weekend breakfast to talk books (that’s tomorrow morning early, as I write this), engaging with other books content, working with colleagues on other pods, etc.
Recently, Cassie and I went to Adelaide Writers Week and presented a show onstage with three international guests. I also recorded a one-on-one interview with an Irish writer, which I’ll edit for another ‘spare’ slot on air in a few weeks, and then will make it a ‘pod extra’ special. Every year, for books people, May is a big deal. I have 3 events at Melbourne Writers Festival coming up in early May and I think 5 at Sydney Writers Festival. A number of these events are panels with 3 or 4 guests, so there’s the reading, planning, thinking and scripting. I also had two smaller writers festivals. Meanwhile, the weekly deadlines don’t go away.
And because I’m part of a network, as well as part of a wider team of arts specialists, we have other big projects that happen both on air and as special (what do we call these?) pod festivals? In previous years we had the Big Weekend of Books, a whole weekend on air plus about 12 hours of pod content, for which I prerecorded at least two big interviews each year, and hosted on air. This year we’re working towards a Top 100 Books special, looking at the best books of the twenty-first century, i.e. of the last 25 years.
We also have an ABC Book Club Facebook Group, which began as a Covid idea, thinking people might want to talk books. Five thousand members would be great, right? Well, it’s up to 87.5K at the moment, and I’m one of the mods for that. And yes, we want those readers to be listening to both the Bookshelf and our sister program podcast, The Book Show with Claire Nichols as well.
Could you tell us about a memorable episode or guest from The Bookshelf?
Our guests are brilliant I reckon. We try to match guests to books, in terms of their specialisation or interest. And we also love an enthusiast. So variety of style and interest is everything. E.g. Tim Rogers from You Am I, is a dedicated reader who cares passionately about books and ideas and emotions and stories, and he was on recently talking about Australian novel First Name Second Name by Steve MinOn. Literary scholar Bernadette Brennan offers something different again, with her astute approach, and she read South Korean Nobel Prize Winner Han Kang’s We Do Not Part. We often ask writers to be on the show as readers, because they bring something different again, like with crime writer Hayley Scrivenor came on recently to read a NZ crime writer. So, what makes these very different people good guests? Their generosity, enthusiasm, and willingness to read, think, and listen.
Finally, what makes for a good podcast or podcast episode pitch?
Oooh, that’s hard. The old, why does it matter and why should we care. With a dose of allowing listeners, and guests, to be intelligent, have depth, know stuff. And have fun as well. A clear line about what the focus is doesn’t hurt either.
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