Narrative Now Narrative Now

In this episode we speak to Dr Tyne Daile Sumner, a literary scholar at the Australian National University. Tyne is currently conducting an ARC-DECRA project called ‘Beyond Big Brother: New Narratives for Understanding Surveillance’ where she looks at how new forms of digital surveillance are represented in literature. We spoke to Tyne to hear more about this project and find out how classic literary narratives - such as George Orwell's 1984 - and new surveillance novels alert us to trends in...

In this episode we speak to Dr Mariam Tokhi and Dr Fiona Reilly, both clinicians who are also affiliated with the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health sciences. Mariam and Fiona are both involved in Australia’s first university subject in Narrative Medicine and they share what they are trying to teach students in this course. We also speak to them about the role of stories in health care and what allowing room for telling and listening to stories of both patient...

In this episode we speak to radio producer and podcaster Miyuki Jokiranta about audio stories. We discuss the challenges of capturing people’s attention via their ears as well as the seductive power of conventional modes of storytelling. Miyuki introduces us to the ethical imperative to rethink how we structure narratives and who we centre as storytellers. This ‘how to’ episode offers insights into the process of planning and creating stories for audio. For an extra feature of Miyuki’s list o...

For this episode we spoke to Edwina Shaw, who teaches creative writing in schools, libraries and at the University of Queensland, and also is a writer herself. Edwina’s work focuses on the healing power of stories and in this episode we explore how storytelling can be a way of working through trauma. We focus on Edwina’s creative writing sessions with people who grew up in out-of-home care and hear about how imaginative and creative writing exercises hold the potential to tell one’s story in ...

For this episode we spoke to Professor Sophie Woodward, University of Manchester, about her work with object-based methods. We asked Sophie why objects are so good at prompting people to tell stories, and what it is that we can learn from these stories. Sophie took us on a tour from her earlier work on fashion objects to her current project on dormant things we keep in our homes. We also hear about a storytelling toolkit, developed together with a community organisation, which takes these met...

In this episode we speak to Arthur Frank about his life’s work on narrative. Frank is an Emeritus Professor in Sociology at the University of Calgary, Canada, and has won many accolades for his work on illness narratives and ethics of care. We discuss Frank’s most well-known work The Wounded Storyteller (1995), now a central text in the narrative canon, and why this book became so influential. We also chat about Frank’s new book, King Lear: Shakespeare's Dark Consolations, where he coins the ...