The First Time The First Time Podcast

This special live recording of The First Time Podcast took place on May 23, 2024 at Carriageworks on Gadigal Land for the Sydney Writers Festival. Podcast co-host, Kate Mildenhall spoke to guests Melanie Saward, James Colley and Charlotte Wood about their books, their paths to publication and the writing life.

Melanie Saward is a proud Bigambul and Wakka Wakka woman. She is a writer, editor and university lecturer based in Tulmur (Ipswich), Queensland. Her debut novel Burn was published by Affirm Press in September 2023. She's widely published in literary journals and anthologies and is currently awaiting sign off on her PhD. In July, her first romantic comedy novel, Love Unleashed, will be published by Penguin Random House.

James Colley is the author of the debut romantic comedy novel The Next Big Thing from Pantera Press. He's the head writer of ABC TV's Gruen and Question Everything.

Charlotte Wood is the author of seven novels and three books of non-fiction. Her books have won or been shortlisted for various prizes including the Stella Prize and the Prime Minister's Award for Fiction. Her latest novel is Stone Yard Devotional which has been shortlisted for Age Book of the Year, ABIA Literary fiction of the year, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award.

Check out show notes for this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com

This episode of The Next Step is with Nat Kringoudis. It’s the episode where Katherine FINALLY gets to talk about both ice baths and fasting. Fasting can be problematic for some people so if you feel like food restriction discussions are triggering, maybe sit this one out.
 
Nat Kringoudis is a health care practitioner, she’s also a two times best selling author, Speaker and all-round natural fertility expert.  She’s the founder of Melbourne women’s health clinic, The Pagoda Tree and host of The Wellness Collective podcast.

Nat is one of those people that’s consistently ahead of the curve. She does a lot of self-experimentation when it comes to health (as discussed in this episode) and has a huge following on social media – if you’re an Instagram person definitely follow her. In addition to health stuff, Nat also talks about how she's built an audience and  businesses around that audience.  

Check out show notes for this episode at katherinecollette.com, subscribe via your podcast app or get in touch via Instagram @katherinecollettewriter.

Laurie Kilmartin is a stand-up comedian and an Emmy-nominated and award-winning comedy writer. She was a staff writer for all 11 years of CONAN and has performed standup on CONAN, Late Late Show w/James Corden, and Comedy Central. 

Laurie Kilmartin is also on Twitter. A lot of people are on Twitter or have been on Twitter, but she’s the kind of tweeter that makes you wish Twitter was still a thing . For example, she life tweeted her dad’s death in a way that was both heart wrenching and hilarious. 

In addition to being very, very funny, Laurie is super candid in this episode about the reality of making a living as a comedian. Her newest special, “Cis Woke Grief Slut,” is currently available in Australia via Tubi. 

Check out show notes for this episode at katherinecollette.com, subscribe via your podcast app or get in touch via Instagram @katherinecollettewriter.

Sarah Pound is the creator of @wholesomebysarah. You’ve probably heard of her before, you may also have cooked her food. Sarah shares easy weeknight recipes on Insta where she a cult following of more than 700,000 people. You can also get Sarah’s meal kids in Woolworths around the country. 

Sarah recently released her first cookbook also called ‘Wholesome by Sarah’. When pre-orders of her cookbook were announced to her within hours it was the #1 bestselling on Amazon Australia. It stayed in the #1 spot for more than a week. It went through multiple re-prints before it was even released, a pretty incredible achievement! 

Sarah and Katherine talk about bouncing back from failure, growing her following on social media and how sometimes she wishes her passion (i.e. cooking) didn't correlate so much with traditional gender roles.  

Check out show notes for this episode at katherinecollette.com, subscribe via your podcast app or get in touch via Instagram @katherinecollettewriter.

This episode of The Next Step is sponsored by Fremantle Press and How to Avoid a Happy Life by Julia Lawrinson.   

Have you ever wanted to own your own business but not known where to begin? Like, literally all you know is that you WANT a business and nothing else? This interview with coach and entrepreneur Luisa Zhou is for you.

Luisa Zhou is the founder of LuisaZhou.com, which teaches people how to go from employee to entrepreneur, and scale their businesses to 6- and 7-figures. She’s helped thousands of people make their first $10K to $100K in less than a year.

Luisa has appeared in numerous online and print publications including Forbes, Business Insider, Money, Inc, Entrepreneur, Success magazine, and more.

In this interview, Katherine mentions the content Luisa puts out for free via her YouTube channel – if you're keen to explore that, here are some places to start: 






Starting your coaching business in less than 24 hours (YouTube)

How to put together your first coaching package (YouTube)

All you need is this one sentence marketing plan (YouTube)

Books mentioned:



Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz

Think and Grow Rich (mentioned in the context of auto-suggestion) by Napoleon Hill

Show notes for this episode are available at katherinecollette.com.

You can subscribe to The Next Step / The First Time via your podcast app and if you like what you hear, please leave a review! If you don't like what you hear, recommend us to someone you hate. 

Get  in touch via Instagram @katherinecollettewriter.

This episode is sponsored by Fremantle Press and the book People Want to Shoot Me by Wayne Bergmann and Madelaine Dickie. 

Brigid Delaney is currently a political speechwriter. She was a journalist for The Guardian, and wrote popular weekly column, 'Brigid Delaney's Diary',’ which we little a little about in this interview. She wrote that column for eight years. It is so good. Like unbelievably and consistently funny, it’s stood the test of time. Read the cheese story and the mansion story mentioned in the episode—they’re incredible!  

Brigid also wrote Wellmania, the book that the Netflix series is based. But the main thing that Katherine and Brigid talk a lot in this interview about is stoicism, which is the focus of her most recent book, Reasons Not to Worry. 

Katherine has wanted to speak to Brigid about stoicism for a long time. Brigid wrote an article about stoicism when COVID first started, and it felt like it offered a sort of solace that wasn’t anywhere else. The concepts are so useful, particularly for creatives and people putting art/writing into the world. 

Check out show notes for this episode at katherinecollette.com, subscribe via your podcast app or get in touch via Instagram @katherinecollettewriter.

This episode is sponsored by Fremantle Press and Marie O'Rourke's book 'Kintsugi'.