Hear This 30th May 2025

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:09):
Take a look. Take a look inside the book. Take
a look.

S2 (00:25):
Hello and welcome to hear this. I'm Frances Kelland and
you're listening to the Vision Australia library show. And today
we have Maureen O'Reilly, community engagement coordinator for the library
here on the show, to talk about what's coming up
in the library and just chatting about things in general.
It's always great to catch up, so I hope you
enjoy the show. Once again, we have Maureen O'Reilly in

(00:52):
the studio with us. Maureen O'Reilly is the community engagement
coordinator here. Hey Maureen, how are you?

S3 (00:59):
I am not too bad. I'm coming back from my
lurgy so I probably sound a bit sinus y, but
I feel better than I sound.

S2 (01:06):
The exciting events that happened. Gosh, it still may, isn't it? Yeah.
So earlier on in the month, the Writers Festival.

S3 (01:12):
Yeah, it was amazing. We had so many beautiful clients
join us in person in Keong, but we had even
more join us online and then even more again, uh,
view the recording after the event. So it was really
lovely being able to bring the festival out of the

(01:33):
city and out of what is not just prohibitive in
terms of accessibility in some ways, but also in terms
of cost for a lot of people, and to have
a free event in the suburbs and live streamed as well.
So we were very privileged to be able to offer
that service to our clients.

S2 (01:52):
Yeah, and I was there too, and I really enjoyed
it and ran so smoothly and was so beautiful. The
audio was clear and yeah.

S3 (02:01):
Oh, look, it really was. And Kate Grenville was just so,
so generous with her thoughts and her time, and I
thought it was really, really honest in terms of her
responses to the questions as well.

S2 (02:12):
Yes.

S3 (02:13):
And I think Kate's intent is I mean, I'm sure
it's multifaceted, but she spoke about the fact that it
was because she felt unsettled and she was very unsettled
with her past. And she said there was multifaceted reasons
behind the title of her most recent novel, but that
was one of the things that she did allude to.

S2 (02:33):
So if people wanted if library members wanted to catch
up on that, how can they do that?

S3 (02:38):
Well, they can get Kate, but also Nati. So before
I answer that, I am going to go back and
mention Nati. Nardi Simpson was phenomenal. Nati treated us to
an impromptu song. She's the most beautiful singer. And again,
it was actually really wonderful because you had these two
very different perspectives of a settlement and us Australia's history,

(03:02):
but both of them just coming from a very honest
and I suppose, um. A positive place in terms of
wanting to move forward and to reconcile and to. Get,
just get a sense really of belonging, particularly in um,
so it was just wonderful. I would encourage everyone to

(03:26):
source your recordings that we have. So if they go
to the Vision Australia Library website, which is Vision Australia.
And they go down to the news section and you
tap on the news tile, you will see a wonderful
tile on the Melbourne Writers Festival. And this gives you
the links to both the recordings. It gives a little

(03:49):
overview of these two books and um, a couple of
Kate's books. And it also then has a link straight
through to the excess catalogue where, um, we have a
number of Kate's books listed. And both of these books.

S2 (04:03):
Yeah. No, it was wonderful. It felt like to me
in the audience at the end of the night, I
felt like I felt kind of opened up to things.
I felt opened up to Kate's perspective and also just
felt opened up to Nadia as well because, uh, you know,
she kind of opened up and you were drawn in, uh,
it was beautiful. Thank you.

S3 (04:22):
For now, I really encourage everyone get a nice cup
of tea, settle down on a couch. Both of the
in conversations go for about an hour. It's just really
enjoyable and hopefully it will inspire you to read their
novels as well.

S2 (04:36):
Is there anything or there's always something coming up?

S3 (04:39):
So the question is, but what I was going to
say is, while you're on the news site and you're
looking at the Melbourne Writers Festival, we also have a
lovely article on the stellar prize, which has been finalised
last Friday. It was so. The Stellar Prize is a
major literary award for female writers. Australian female writers. They

(05:02):
have a short list of books, and we've listed all
of those. We also have the long list, and then
we have our winner. And all of the books from
the short list. And the winning author are in the
Vision Australia catalog as well.

S2 (05:16):
Fantastic.

S3 (05:17):
Um, so Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser is
the winner. And that that was a very, very popular win.
So and this is her third time that she's been shortlisted.
So it's very exciting that she's actually got a win.
But this year's shortlist is really interesting because it's the
first time that it features only women of color. I

(05:38):
think it's indicative in some ways of what's going on
in the world at the moment. And I mean, it's
a very uncertain time across many cultures, many countries, many religions.
And I think that's been reflected in the writing and
therefore the shortlist that's come out for the stellar prize
as well.

S2 (05:56):
Yes, absolutely. Um, well that's interesting. I must have a
look at that.

S3 (06:01):
Well, anyone can go. As I said, Vision australia.org/library. When
you scan down the page, there's, um, a lovely tile
that says news items. And you can see the Melbourne
Writers Festival, you can see the stellar prize, but you
can also see a number of other, um, reading lists
that we've had, uh, that have been up. So, for example,

(06:23):
there's a beautiful reading list that we put together for
Anzac Day. Um, there was a gorgeous one we put
together for International Women's Day. So if you're short on
ideas on what to read next, it's always a really
good place to go.

S2 (06:36):
What's coming up? Looking looking ahead.

S3 (06:38):
Ah, looking ahead is very exciting. Now that we've put
the festival behind us, we get to go back to
the rest of our calendar of events for the year.
And we're starting with a brand new event on the
12th of June, which is our Meet the Vision Australia
library narrators, and I'm really looking forward to this. This

(06:58):
is an event that came from a lot of requests
from our library members. It was also a result of
a really popular tele link that the Vision Australia Radio did.
So we're sure that there's going to be a lot
of people really keen to join us. So Marilyn Barclay,
who's a wonderful narrator for the Vision Australia radio. She's

(07:20):
been with us for nearly ten years now. I'm going
to have a chat with Marilyn. We're going to talk
about her journey that brought her to Vision Australia. We're
going to talk about the narration that she's done of
nearly 50 books over the past ten years, and then
we've given her the opportunity to choose her own book,
because the narrators don't get to choose what they narrate.

(07:42):
So given her own choice, she has chosen This Is
Happiness by Nigel Williams, and the Marilyn is going to
treat us to a 20 minute, 30 minute reading from
that book as well. So it'd be lovely to sit back,
have a beautiful dulcet tones, and then we will have
a Q&A with our questions at our library. Members have

(08:05):
posted during the registration process, or they can put in
the chat of the webinar as well.

S2 (08:11):
Well, it's wonderful because it's always interesting to find out
how narrators come to.

S3 (08:15):
It'll be really lovely because it's we always say that
the library catalog is very much a member driven catalog,
because the members will make requests, they'll make suggestions, and
the novels in the books that we purchase and we
upload are very much in response to what people have

(08:36):
been asking for. So I love the fact that the
calendar of programs and events that we have this year
is also very much member driven. This has very much
come out of the surveys that we run after each
event that we do, where we say to people, what
else would you like us to deliver? What else would
you like to experience?

S2 (08:55):
Yeah. That's great. And I know Marilyn Barclay's voice, because
I think I might have even last week had a
sample of one of the books she's narrated. So, yes,
50 books. Amazing.

S3 (09:04):
And it's also a lot of the programs and events
we run are, I suppose, writing related, whereas this is
very much about reading, and I'm just looking forward to
sitting back and listening to her read from a book
that she's chosen, but also an excerpt that she's chosen.
It's very lovely being read to.

S2 (09:23):
And what else is coming up?

S3 (09:25):
Well, after we have our Meet the Library narrators, we
have our Meet the Vision Australia librarian. So we're up
for our quarterly book chat. And this is our cosy
winter bookshop because it's a seasonal thing. So we are
having our senior librarian, uh, Marnie Rose Smith, join us.
So this will be very lovely. And this is on

(09:47):
the 31st of July. And this is a wonderful opportunity
for everyone to meet our librarians to You share a
whole lot of books and to walk away with a
fabulous book list. So money's going to review two new
release novels that she's been reading, and she'll give us
a background on the author. What else have written what

(10:09):
she thought of these particular novels? Basically a warts and
all appraisal of them. And then V Nguyen, who's going
to be hosting, uh, will also give a review of
what he's been reading. So another new release novel, again,
a bit of a pros and cons, what he likes
about it, what he doesn't think is so good. And

(10:29):
then we pass the mic over to all the attendees
that are there to tell us about their latest read.
So everyone just gets to have a couple of minutes
talking about what they're reading, what they think is really
good about it, why they really like that author. And
we pass the mic around between everyone. Anyone that doesn't
want to contribute, that's perfectly fine. We all love an audience.

(10:52):
And then at the end of it, the intention is
that you'll have a whole list of books from Marnie
V and all the other, um, library members who are present,
which will enable you to say, yep, that sounds like
a great book I'd like to read. Or no, that's
not really for me. So it's not just about finding
books you'd like, but also being able to go, no, no, no,

(11:14):
I'm not going to waste time on that one.

S2 (11:16):
Yeah. You mentioned cosy winter reads. So that's the theme.
Is that something that you would like people to take
in mind if they're going to be talking about books
they like?

S3 (11:26):
I really don't mind. It's whatever they've been reading. Um,
it'd be great if it's a new release because then
it's probably new for a lot of people. So that's
what V and Marnie will be on. But in terms
of what actual library members want to review, we're perfectly
happy for them to just tell us whatever their favourite

(11:47):
book they're reading at the moment. Or sometimes when we
did our one, um, in autumn, um, people spoke about
books that they read that they really didn't like, and
they said, you know, I've read other things by this author.
I thought he was great, but this one just didn't
hit the mark. And and that's okay, because then it
saves everyone else the trauma of reading that book.

S2 (12:08):
Yes. Um, yeah. All right. That sounds fantastic. When is
that happening?

S3 (12:13):
That is on the 31st of July, and it's a
bit late. That one. That one's at 4 p.m., so
we'd like to move the times around a little bit
because some people require, um, carers or family members to
help them in terms of the technology, some people have jobs,
some people have other commitments, medical commitments during the day.

(12:33):
So we try not to have all the events at
the same time. So this is a later in the
day one.

S2 (12:38):
And Maureen, anything else coming up?

S3 (12:40):
We do because we are busy people. We have our
next writing course coming up, which is writing your family history.
And this is always a very, very popular topic, but
this is quite different from the memoir writing courses that
we've run last year and the year prior. We've run
about five courses. This one's more technical about writing a

(13:05):
family history. So where to go for the facts? Where to?
You can go to get more information. How you should
go about sourcing, um, additional detail to go with these, um,
little gems of information that you may have had from
a great grandmother or someone. Yeah. So Jonathan Butler will

(13:28):
be joining us. And Jonathan actually ran our family history
course late 2023. So about a year and a half ago,
and it was exceptionally popular. So it's not just about
how to write a memoir in terms of the writing style,
this is very much more the the foundations and the

(13:50):
framework of putting it all together.

S2 (13:52):
Okay, that sounds great. Yeah, because sometimes you get those
tidbits like, you know, in memoriam, you know, a relative
and died sadly too soon. And you think, what did they.
You know, you want more? Yeah. So this is great.

S3 (14:06):
No, this is great. I mean, my mum went off
to England and Ireland to research her family history and
went to all the. Because the churches are great, they
have marriage records and baptism records and death records. So
and mostly they're just hard copy as well. So she
went round all of those and also the town halls
and the registry offices and so on, and the shipping records. But,

(14:29):
you know, not everybody is quite that committed or has
the capacity to do that. Um, that was my mum
and dad's one and only big overseas trip, and mum
took him on a family history journey. Oh, he was
very patient. So you don't need to go to that extent. Instead,
I suggest that you join our family history course. Yeah.

(14:52):
So that will be commencing on Monday, July 14th. And
that's at 11 a.m. for an hour and a half.
And that is three sessions. So we will have one
on Monday the 14th, Monday the 21st and Monday the 28th.

S2 (15:06):
Oh gosh, not some nice warm winter activities coming up.
You don't have to leave your home.

S3 (15:12):
And it's also really well positioned because it is immediately
prior to Family History Month and during Family History Month.
There is a lot of resources available to people and
a lot of support to help people when they're trying
to compile their family history. So I think you can
do the course with Jonathan, get inspired, get fired up,

(15:33):
get a lot of questions, and then actually take advantage
of all those resources that are available during Family History Month.

S2 (15:41):
Yes, because some things that are often locked away or
are paid are free for Family History Month. So yeah.

S3 (15:47):
No it's great. So I think it's well we positioned
it because sometimes you don't know what you don't know.
So the idea is you can do this course, you
can figure out what you need, and then you can
capitalize on all the resources that are there. And as
you said often, they're just locked away because the libraries
don't have the resources to be able to have everything

(16:07):
available at the same time.

S2 (16:09):
Yeah, absolutely. Gosh. And to digitize everything would be just
so such a massive work. Yeah.

S3 (16:17):
And it lose its charm, too.

S2 (16:18):
Yes, yes. Yeah. The rustling of the paper. The smell
of the dust. Yeah. And anything else coming up?

S3 (16:24):
We do. We have one more that's making a an encore.
That's the word I'm looking for. Last year, we ran
our Accessible Writing Tools and Technology webinar, and that was
hugely successful. We had over 200 people that attended both
in person and online. And then we've also had a

(16:45):
lot of ongoing viewing of the recording, which is on
the library news site. 12 months on. We're going to
revisit with a view that there is a lot of
new technology that have come out in the last 12 months.
There's also a lot of improvements on existing technology, and
there's also a lot of things that we would have
liked to have covered last time, but we only have

(17:08):
an hour, so you have to actually make a choice.
And we tried to make sure that we covered, you know,
at least one really good example from every type of
tool or piece of technology. So this gives us an
opportunity to go back to some of the ones which
are fabulous, but we didn't cover last time.

S2 (17:26):
Oh that's great. Yeah. Um, and that is inspiring as well.
All of these things are inspiring.

S3 (17:31):
It is. So we'll have, um, Jim with us, who
was one of the hosts for our last trading tools.
And we'll also have Kent, who was part of our
reading tools that we did later in the year. So
both of them are very talented, accessible technology experts at
Vision Australia. Jim is vision impaired himself, so he has

(17:54):
a lot of firsthand experience with all the tools and
can also not only, um, works heavily within that accessible
technology field for adults, but also does a lot of
work with children in schools. So he has that, um,
added dimension to him as well. So it'll be really very,

(18:16):
very good. And I encourage everyone to come, because the
problem is that people often think that, um, the piece
of technology they have is amazing. It's wonderful because when
they actually acquired it five, ten, 15 years ago, it
was life changing. But what's happened in that five, ten,

(18:37):
15 years is that eyesight has deteriorated more, and in fact,
there's better technology that can help them now that they're
not aware of or even if their eyesight hasn't altered
in terms of, um, their visibility technology has improved. So
although what you've got with the best on the market, say,

(18:59):
ten years ago, what's on the market now is even better.
So it's a great opportunity to see what technology is
out there that will suit your level of blindness or
vision impaired level to make sure that you can get
the very best, um, writing tools available so that you

(19:20):
can do simple things like shopping lists and birthday cards
and Christmas cards through to larger scale things like journals
or even actually writing your family history.

S2 (19:33):
Mhm. Yeah, yeah. It's um it's hard because you do
get attached to things. And I remember when we changed
from disks in the library here. And so the discs
were played on a daisy player and then we made
the daisy players stream the books, uh, and just the
comfort people had with that physical disc and knowing that, oh,

(19:55):
if I put this in, it will play. That uncomfortable
feeling of having. Well, there's no disc to physically be
able to control. So how am I going to work
this and, and then just people just taking on that
new technology. And it was just great because it is
it's like you go, okay, I'm really happy with this.

S3 (20:10):
And also I think often it's that people don't realize
that it could be better. So they think the tools
I have are just a great asset to my daily life,
and they don't realize that you could have even better ones.

S2 (20:25):
Mm. That sounds fantastic. And is there anything else, Maureen?

S3 (20:28):
No, I think that's enough to keep us busy for now.

S2 (20:30):
Okay.

S3 (20:31):
We will have our newsletter going out next week though,
so I do encourage everyone to get a nice little
comfy spot, bit of sun coming in a window and
either reading through the newsletter which will be emailed, or
you can listen to the audio version on the excess catalogue.
And that will give you all the news that's going

(20:53):
on in the library. It will give you all the
events that are coming up. It'll give you an overview
of all the reading lists that we have in the
news section. And it'll just give you a really good
idea of what's happening in the library.

S2 (21:06):
Oh, well, thank you so much, Maureen, and I'm glad
you're on the mend from your lurgy.

S3 (21:10):
I am.

S2 (21:12):
And yeah, we'll be, uh, see you again next month.

S3 (21:14):
That'll be fabulous, Francis. Have a wonderful month and a
wonderful journey into winter.

S2 (21:30):
As Maureen mentioned, the Stella Prize winner has been announced
and was Michelle de Kretser with her book Theory and Practice.
We'll hear a sample of the book, but I'm reading
from the Reading's. Website here. Astrid Edwards, who was one
of the judges or the chair of the judges for
the 2025 Stellar Prize, said Theory and Practice is an

(21:53):
exceptional novel of hyper realism in which Michelle de Kretser,
an author of At the Height of her powers, interrogates
the messiness of life found in the gap between theory
and practice. The Guardian call this De Kretser most experimental
book yet, and they harken back to a 2009 interview
with Michelle de Kretser, who would go on to win

(22:14):
the Miles Franklin Literary Award twice, and the author characterized
her work as quote, questing, jesting, and testing. And they
say it's an apt description for her seventh book and
her most experimental novel yet. Theory and practice. Jack Galil,
who is the reviewer here in The Guardian from Friday
the 22nd of November 2024, finishes off the review with

(22:39):
saying Like Kit's relationship, this is also a deconstructed book,
both philosophically in its scratching at hidden contradictions and tensions,
and literally its assembled parts shimmering as a whole. So
much is condensed into its brief length, not least of
which is a probing interrogation of novels and why we
write them. Near the book's close, the narrator remarks that

(23:02):
the politics of novels are not merely, quote, ethical device
for recognizing our shared qualities or eliciting sympathy for those
unlike us. Instead, as De Kretser accomplishes, accomplishes in theory
and practice, they allow witness of life's in quotes again
messy human truth told without shame. So the novel's setting

(23:25):
is its 1986 and beautiful, radical ideas are in the air.
A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels
of Virginia Woolf. In Bohemian Saint Kilda, she meets the artists, activists,
students and kit. He claims to be in a deconstructed
relationship and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the
Wolf Mother falls into disarray. Let's hear that sample now

(23:49):
of Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser. It's narrated
by Meow Meow.

S4 (23:55):
At first, he barely notices the children. They're waiting for
the bus. A small boy and a girl of about
ten with braided hair. He's 23. Too close to childhood
and too far from it to find children of consequence. Also,
a Spanish music teacher in London is keeping him from

(24:15):
thinking about anyone else. She'd sent him a letter poste
restante that reached him in France. The letter was friendly
and calm. A day later he had it by heart.
In Switzerland, he's still running his mind over it. Hunting.
He's searching for the chain of requests, expectations and subtle

(24:36):
demands with which he believes women make prisoners of men.
It's 1957 back in Australia. Rivers of southern Europeans are
pouring into Sydney from ships docked at Circular Quay. They
flood the city with superstitions, politics, emotions, smells. They draw

(24:56):
attention to themselves with noisy colours. He met the music
teacher twice and twice. She was wearing a flowery red shirt,
a bracelet, a band of blue showed where a cuff
met her wrist. The wrist was thick and looked strong.
He's seen the same peasant hands gripping suitcases in newsreels.

(25:17):
The impression of strength runs contrary to his idea of
a female musician, which is based on an engraving of
the young Clara Schumann that hangs in the institution where
his mother is housed. The music teacher brought up politics
at once, informing him that her family had fled Barcelona
at the end of the civil war. That means her

(25:40):
people must be communists. So why begin her letter with
a hand-drawn cross? Another thing is that she has blue
eyes and fair hair. Although Spaniards are dark, her contradictions
excite and unsettle him. Are they symptoms of Old World
sophistication or European deceit?

S2 (26:01):
That was Theory and practice by Michelle de Kretser. Michelle
is Mitchell Mitchell. De Kretser is d e k t
e r d e k e t s e. That
book is a short one, goes for four hours and

(26:22):
40 minutes, and I will explain. Meow meow is a
entertainer here in Melbourne. Um. Wonderful singer. Dancer. Um, she's
done a bit of burlesque. Uh, so that's who the
narrator is. That's her stage name. Meow meow. As in
the cat. A little bit about Michelle de Kretser. She
was born in Sri Lanka. She worked for the Lonely

(26:43):
Planet and in 1999 wrote and published her first novel,
the Rose grower, which is available in the library. Her
second novel, The Hamilton Case, was winner of the Tasmanian
Pacific Prize, the Encore Award in the UK and the
Commonwealth Writers Prize for the South East Asia and Pacific.
We also have that in the library. Moving on to

(27:03):
19 oh. Moving on to 2013. Questions of Travel, which
is in the library, won the Miles Franklin Award for
2013 and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for fiction. It
was also shortlisted for the 2014 International Dublin Literary Award,
and her 2017 novel The Life to Come was the

(27:24):
other award. Miles Franklin Award winner. We have all of
Michelle de Kretser books in the library collection, including in
Braille in the format of Braille, so audio and Braille
are available for all of her books. An author to
really enjoy. Thank you for joining us on here this today.

(27:45):
I'm Francis Kelland. Thank you to Maureen for coming in
with all of that wonderful information about what's coming up
with the library. And look, if you need to have
a recap, you can always ring the library and they
will be able to remind you of the events that
Maureen talked about and help you out with any registrations
and things like that. Uh, if you would like to
join the library, please give a call 1300 654 656. Or you

(28:11):
can email library at Vision Australia. That's library org. And
that's where anything if you want to join the library,
if you would like to, um, make an inquiry about
particular authors. Books are in the collection. Anything like that
as well as the wonderful reader recommended or narrator recommended titles,
if you like a narrator. We'll be back next week

(28:34):
with more here. This.