Show Notes
In this episode, we’re bringing you a story from our friends at History Lab. Historical novelist Sienna Brown brings to life the story of Nellie Small, a trailblazing performer whose life challenged the boundaries of race, gender, and identity in early 20th-century Australia. You'll hear actor Zahra Newman as Nellie, and an interview with playwright Alana Valentina, for whom Nellie has been a rich source of writerly inspiration. Head to History Lab and subscribe to hear all four episodes of this special series, Caribbean Echoes - and much more. History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast, made in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Public History. Voices Alana Valentine is a librettist, playwright, and director who is an expert at working with real life subjects and stories, dramatizing them with respect. She has three plays on the NSW HSC Syllabus: Parramatta Girls, Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah, and Cyberbile. Her play, Letters to Lindy, has seen hundreds of amateur and school productions. Valentine is particularly distinguished in her skills as a co-collaborator, notably with Barbara and the Camp Dogs, which won the 2019 Helpmann Award for Best Musical and Best Original Score. She has chronicled her practice in Bowerbird and published the memoir Wed By The Wayside. Professor Cassandra Pybus FAHA specializes historical narratives about people who have been marginalized, forgotten or written out of history. An award-winning author she has published 13 books including Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia's First Black Settlers and the bestselling biography, Truganini. She has held research professorships at the University of Sydney, Georgetown University in Washington DC, the University of Texas and King's College London. She is descended from a colonist who received the largest free land grant on Truganini's traditional country of Bruny Island. Vanessa Cassin is Education Manager at Society of Australian Genealogists with extensive experience in providing training and assessment in the trustee industry, both as an in-house trainer for the NSW Trustee & Guardian and as an assessor for Western Sydney University the College’s Registered Training Organisation. Vanessa holds a Diploma in Family Historical Studies from the Society of Australian Genealogists and has been researching her own family history for over 20 years. Zahra Newman was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, and moved to Australia at age 14. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Newman has an extensive list of credits in theatre, television, and film. Her notable works include her performance as Nabalungi in the original Australian cast of The Book of Mormon, and her lead role in the play The Hate Race and in the film Long Story Short. She has received a Green Room Award, a Sydney Theatre Award, and multiple Helpmann Award nominations. Newman played all 23 characters in the Sydney Theatre Company’s recent one-person production of Dracula. Graeme Rhodes’ acting career spans over 30 years and includes numerous theatre, film, television and radio credits. Most recently he has been working as a writer and director for Forum theatre based Industrial safety programs. When he’s not acting he sings with a jazz trio and builds electronic noise making machines. Credits This series was produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eeora Nation and Burramatagal people of the Dharug nation. Narrator, writer, and producer: Sienna Brown Sound recordist, writer, and producer: Ben Etherington Supervising producer: Jane Curtis, UTS Impact Studios Executive producer: Sarah Gilbert, UTS Impact Studios Sound designer and engineer: John Jacobs Support The research for this series was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia: Poetics and Decolonisation (DP220101256). We are also grateful to the Writing and Society Research Centre and School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western
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Has therapy come to define modern life? In this special episode of Fully Lit, Sydney Review of Books Editor James Jiang is joined by writer and scholar Christian Gelder and award-winning essayist Eda Gunaydin to probe the depths of contemporary therapeutic culture. Together, they consider how different therapeutic practices shape our ideas and language around identity, responsibility, and personal transformation, while also reflecting on the promises and limitations of therapy itself. The conversation offers perspectives from both the psychoanalytic and cognitive behavioural traditions, while touching on the best-selling book The Body Keeps the Score, the links between therapy and literature, and what our fascination with therapy tells us about our politics. At its psychic core, this episode asks how contemporary culture has come to understand itself through a therapeutic lens. Voices James Jiang is Editor of the Sydney Review of Books. Christian Gelder is an ARC DECRA Fellow in English and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne whose research focuses on psychoanalysis, cognitive behavioural therapy and the history of therapeutic culture. Eda Gunaydin is an award-winning essayist, a lecturer in politics at the University of Wollongong, and the author of Root and Branch: Essays on Inheritance. She is the current Parramatta Laureate in Literature. Credits Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros. Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang. Recorded and Edited by Regina Botros. Recorded at 2SER FM studios. Further Reading The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk Against Understanding by Bruce Fink What Is Madness? by Darian Leader "Self Unhelped" by Christian Gelder (Sydney Review of Books) "Where Have All the Addicts Gone?" by Christian Gelder and Rob Boncardo (Sydney Review of Books) Root and Branch: Essays on Inheritance by Eda Gunaydin For more conversations about literature, ideas and contemporary culture, explore the Fully Lit back catalogue.
What does home feel like when you've spent your life searching for it? And how do stories help us make sense of identity, belonging and displacement? In this special episode of Fully Lit, recorded live at the Addi Road Writers’ Festival, members of Dorr-e Dari present an evening of storytelling, poetry and conversation exploring Afghan Australian experiences. The event opens with a powerful personal story from Zeynab Noori about travelling to Afghanistan for the first time and confronting the realities of life under Taliban rule. Writer, director and producer Kobra Sayyadi shares original reflections on travel, courage, beauty and self-discovery, while the performance celebrates the richness and diversity of Afghan culture beyond the narratives that so often dominate public discussion. In conversation with writer and broadcaster Sheila Ngoc Pham, the group reflects on questions of home, migration, memory, identity and artistic practice. Together, they discuss what it means to belong across multiple countries and cultures, the challenges of representation, and the role of art in creating space for community voices. This is a conversation about storytelling and the many ways people carry home within them. Voices Kobra Sayyadi is a Hazara-Afghan theatre-maker, writer, and interdisciplinary artist blending theatre, poetry, film, and audio. Her work explores feeling, belonging, and the spaces in between. Zeynab Noori is an Afghan Hazara actor, born and raised in Iran, whose cross-cultural upbringing informs her artistic voice and perspective. Jawad runs a plastering business, providing his services on construction sites all over Sydney. He was a member of ensemble PYT Fairfield for three years and made his debut as a performer at Griffin Theatre in the premiere production of PYT’s Tribunal. Mahdi Mohammadi trained as a theatre director at Kabul University, where he co-founded Papyrus Theatre. Under his leadership, the company was awarded First Prize at the Afghan National Theatre Festival and toured internationally to India and Sweden. Sheila Ngoc Pham is a writer, editor, producer, curator and researcher. Sheila previously co-directed the Addi Road Writers' Festival (2021-2023), and her other curation work includes an exhibition of Đông Hồ paintings (2019) for the State Library of NSW, and most recently, MÌNH (2023) for Fairfield City Museum and Gallery. She is the 2025 Imago Fellow at the State Library of NSW. Credits This episode of Fully Lit was recorded at the Addi Road Writers’ Festival on Gadigal land in Sydney. Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros. Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang. Recorded and mixed by Daniel Wiggins.
What do we owe to the people we love? And how do we carry each other’s stories through time? In this episode of Fully Lit, Chinese-Australian writer Isabelle Li joins acclaimed novelist Gail Jones to discuss The Northern Tomb, a sweeping and deeply humane novel about family, memory, obligation and belonging. Set in northern China and spanning decades of personal and political history, the novel follows an ageing former government official, his family, and Sister Fu, the quiet carer whose compassion and attention bring their stories into focus. Together, Li and Jones explore kinship, care, ageing, grief, friendship and the responsibilities we hold towards one another. They discuss the power of storytelling, the role of memory in shaping identity, and the ways literature can deepen our understanding of lives beyond our own experience. At the centre of it all is a simple but profound question: how do we learn to care for one another? This episode of Fully Lit was recorded at Gleebooks on Gadigal land in Sydney. Voices Isabelle Li is a Chinese Australian writer and translator whose works include the short story collection A Chinese Affair and the novel The Northern Tomb. Gail Jones is one of Australia’s most acclaimed novelists, the author of eleven novels, whose work has been translated widely and recognised with numerous major literary awards. Credits This episode was recorded on Gadigal land at Sydney's Gleebooks - for more literary events like this one, see the Gleebooks events page. Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros. Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang. Recorded by Gleebooks. Mixed by Regina Botros. Further Reading The Northern Tomb by Isabelle Li (Puncher & Wattman, 2026) A Chinese Affair by Isabelle Li (Margaret River Press, 2016) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez The Selected Stories of Lu Xun Gail Jones' latest novel is The Name of the Sister (Text, 2025) For more conversations about fiction, storytelling and contemporary Australian writing, explore the Fully Lit back catalogue.
What makes a literary reputation endure, and why do some writers disappear from view despite once standing at the centre of a nation's culture? In this episode biographer Susan Lever joins poet and critic Peter Kirkpatrick to discuss her major new biography, A.D. Hope, tracing the life of a writer whose career spanned almost the entire twentieth century. From rural Tasmania and Sydney University to Oxford, Canberra and the centre of Australian literary life, the conversation examines Hope's poetry, criticism and public intellectual role, as well as the literary debates that shaped his reputation. Along the way, Lever explores Hope's relationships with figures including James McAuley, Patrick White and Manning Clark, his attitudes to modernism, censorship and religion, and the tensions between his public persona and private life. The discussion also considers Hope's place in Australian literary history today. This conversation coincides with the publication of a review of Susan Lever’s A.D. Hope in the Sydney Review of Books, offering another perspective on Hope’s life, work and legacy. This episode of Fully Lit was recorded at Gleebooks on Gadigal land in Sydney. Voices Susan Lever is one of Australia’s leading literary critics and biographers, whose books include studies of Australian fiction and the acclaimed biography A.D. Hope. Peter Kirkpatrick is a poet, literary historian and Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, whose work explores Australian poetry, popular culture and literary history. Credits This episode was recorded on Gadigal land at Sydney's Gleebooks - for more literary events like this one, see the Gleebooks events page. Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros. Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang. Recorded by Gleebooks. Mixed by Regina Botros. Further Reading A.D. Hope by Susan Lever Damian Maher reviews Susan Lever’s biography of A.D. Hope, published in the Sydney Review of Books The Wandering Islands by A.D. Hope Collected Poems 1930–1970 by A.D. Hope The Cave and the Spring: Essays on Poetry by A.D. Hope The Best Australian Poems of A.D. Hope, edited by David Brooks The Wild Reciter: Poetry and Popular Culture in Australia, 1890–2020 by Peter Kirkpatrick
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