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Diving into the world of diaries – the good, the bad and everything in between.
Writers Jenny Ackland and Tracy Farr are fascinated by diaries: their own and other people’s. They’ve curated 25 Bad Diaries Salons across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand since 2017, and in 2023 they started a podcast to keep the discussion going. In Seasons 1 & 2 (2023 & 2024), Jenny and Tracy chat with each other and with some of the nearly 80 authors who have read at Bad Diaries Salons. For Season 3 and beyond, Tracy's taken over the reins.
20 Episodes
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In this episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, Tracy talks with writer Caroline Barron about diaries, speaking your truth with kindness, and the power and particular melancholy of nostalgia. Caroline is the author of two wonderful books – a memoir, Ripiro Beach, and a novel, Golden Days – and in this episode of the podcast, we talk about how both of these books use and connect with diaries. We talk about Caroline’s decades-long and very consistent diarykeeping practice, and we look at her latest pr...
In this episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, Tracy talks with writer Annabel Smith about throwing her diary across the room, hearting Michael J. Fox, and singing SexyBack at karaoke. Annabel has taken part in three Bad Diaries Salons, including our third ever salon back in 2017, in Perth. Annabel is also the creative force behind the live spoken word series To Whom It May Concern: Complaint Letters Live, and Tracy and Annabel talk about some of the similarities and differences with Bad Diari...
In this episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, Tracy talks with writer and academic Chris Brickell about ferreting in the Hocken research collections, the joy of collaboration, and editing writers’ diaries for publication. Tracy’s just back from a 6-week residency at Robert Lord Writers Cottage in Ōtepoti Dunedin, where she met Chris Brickell and Vanessa Manhire who, with Nonnita Rees, edited Robert Lord Diaries (OUP 2013). In this chat recorded for the podcast, Tracy starts by asking Chris whether...
Bad Diaries Podcast is ba-a-ack for Season 3! Tracy Farr is flying Bad Diaries Podcast solo, poised to land a new season of interviews with writers, talking about our own and other people’s diaries. Find Jenny Ackland on MY MUM'S BAD DIARIES. Find Tracy's new novel WONDERLAND. Follow BAD DIARIES PODCAST ahead of the first episode of the new season, dropping soon – or listen back to our earlier episodes while you wait. As the podcast season progresses, as well as interviews, we’ll have news o...
In this episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, Tracy talks with arts festival founder and director, arts events maven, book reviewer, books editor, essayist and novelist Claire Mabey about a life in the arts, the wisdom of teachers, and the transportive power of reading. Claire’s debut novel, The Raven’s Eye Runaways, was published only two months ago, and is already making its mark, flying out across the book world. Hera Lindsay Bird called it “powerfully atmospheric” and “immersive”; Elizabeth Kno...
In this episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, Jenny talks with Janine Mikosza about art, writing, her extraordinary memoir Homesickness, and reading Duran Duran fan fiction at Bad Diaries Salon. Jen and Janine talk about how Janine came to writing, and her memoir Homesickness. After majoring in sculpture, Justine completed post-graduate study in photo media, and practised for a decade with solo and group exhibitions. She’s now a research assistant for money work, with writing and art on the side. J...
In this episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, Tracy talks with award winning writer, reviewer, former literary festival director and ex-bass player Rachael King about reading journals, her love of a good boot, and why she’s no longer writing novels for adults. Rachael’s latest novel, The Grimmelings – “folk horror! for kids!” – is proper scary. And it’s a finalist in the New Zealand Children’s Book Awards, for the Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction. In this episode of the podcast, we wonder wheth...
In our first guest interview for Season 2 of the podcast, Jenny chats with Jock Serong on a chilly Victorian night. They talk diaries, rituals, the writing life, and what Jock does with his old Blundstones. Jock was one of five writers who read at the second-ever Bad Diaries Salon, back in September 2017 in Melbourne, and in this interview Jenny and Jock look back at that salon. The theme was TRIPS, and Jock read from a travel journal he kept in his 20s; in this episode of the podcast, Jock r...
Double, double toil and trouble, join the two of us on the pod to make a throuple – this episode is all about THREE. We’ve chosen THREE as the theme of our second episode of the season not because we can’t count, but because we both have exciting bookish news for our THIRD novels. Tracy’s third (and as-yet unpublished) novel – which is full of triplets and other threes – has been shortlisted for the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize. And Jenny’s third novel will be out in the world next m...
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome to the blank first page (for Tracy, terrifying; for Jen, not) of season 2 of Bad Diaries Podcast. In our first episode of the podcast for 2024, we look back at the summer that’s passed since our xmas episode – a summer of busy-ness, bereavement, and a broken bone. Then we make a schmear on the blank page of season 2, and leap right into it with a chat about diarymaking – whatever diarymaking means. Usually on the pod we focus on the content, on the words...
Pickle your beets, sniff your jars, and wrap the Christmas ham in a teatowel! We’ve reached the toe, the toenail, the heel – no, the sole of the year, and Jenny and Tracy are bringing (or at least name-checking) the A-list celebs for A Very Diary Xmas. In this final episode of Bad Diaries Podcast for 2023, recorded on a thundery (Wellington) and hot (Melbourne) day in December, we bemoan the tyranny of email, and celebrate staying in bed and sensible shoes. We look to other people’s diaries...
In this episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, Tracy talks with poet, essayist and zine-maker Nadine Anne Hura about diaries, the narrative arc of a life, writing and drawing, and Dirty Dancing. After reading at Bad Diaries Salon:RADICAL in Wellington in 2022, Nadine wrote about what it was like to prepare for and take part in the salon, in a piece titled ‘The narrative arc of your own life’. In this episode of the podcast, we use that as a jumping off point for a wide-ranging discussion of diaries...
In this interview episode for Bad Diaries Podcast, Jenny talks with curator, writer and art historian Emily McCulloch Childs. Emily loves diaries, life writing, and writers’ journals; her own earliest diary (velveteen-covered, horse-emblazoned) dates to when she was ten years old. Jenny and Emily talk about how they first met as anonymous bloggers in the 2010s, the freedom of not having to be ‘writery’ on their blogs, the sense of liberation that anonymity gave, and how blogging could become...
A mixed tape of an episode that takes in The Saints and New Order at the Seaview Ballroom in 1982 Melbourne, writes a song about a closed cemetery in rainy Paris in 1989, nicks a guitar pick from the INXS stage, and reads a lot of Dick Francis. After the last two interview episodes with special guests, this episode of Bad Diaries Podcast brings Jenny and Tracy back together, to read from our own diaries, on the theme of NOTES. We set the same theme for a Bad Diaries Salon in Melbourne in Ma...
In our second guest interview episode for Bad Diaries Podcast, Tracy talks with poet, essayist, reviewer and five-time Bad Diaries Salon reader Kate Camp about diaries, the slipperiness of memory, and noticing what you notice. Kate and Tracy dig down into the experience of reading at, and returning to, Bad Diaries Salon – what that means, what it brings, and what it feels like. Kate very generously talks about and reads from the treasure that is the little red diary she kept every day in 198...
In our first guest interview episode for Bad Diaries Podcast, Jenny talks with Sarah Krasnostein. On a May morning in Melbourne, Sarah and Jenny sink into Succession, narrative structure and shaping a story, research stepping stones, stationery, and Sarah talks about reading her early spy diaries (hello, Harriet the Spy) at a Bad Diaries Salon in Melbourne in 2018. Sarah reads from her 2022 book The Believer (Text Publishing, Australia; Tin House, US). Sarah Krasnostein is the multi-award ...
In this third episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, we talk about the origin of BAD in Bad Diaries, and how, in our diaries, we can allow the badness – and the goodness – of our unedited lives to show. Jen coins the term ba-goodness, and we commit to making bad good (and making good bad). We bring other people’s diaries to this episode of the podcast, raiding our bookshelves for a random selection of Not At All Bad But Really Very Good Diaries to discuss. Some are diaries that we love and ha...
In this second episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, we take another dive into the Bad Diaries universe. We ask each other, Were you always a writer? We talk about our own history and practice of keeping diaries, personal journals and writing notebooks, and how that’s changed over time. Tracy curses her long-ago diary-reading boyfriend, and we ponder value, worth and hierarchies of writing. Tracy reads diary entries made on an overseas work trip (seaweed conference in Thessaloniki? Yes, please!),...
In this first episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, we talk about Bad Diaries Salon, the live literary series that we co-produce and co-curate – from the concept’s beginnings in 2017, when Jenny first put a call out on Twitter, to running 20 salons, with more than 70 readers, between 2017 and 2022. We talk about what makes the Bad Diaries Salon engine (juggernaut!) run so smoothly, recite the Bad Diaries Salon rules, and talk about the gold at the heart of salons: “people dig the concept, they get...
Diving into the world of diaries - the good, the bad and everything in between. Writers Jenny Ackland and Tracy Farr are fascinated by diaries: their own and other people’s. They’ve curated more than 20 Bad Diaries Salons across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand since 2017, and now have a podcast to keep the discussion going. Join them as they chat with each other and with some of the more than 70 authors who have read at the Bad Diaries Salons. Find full show notes for this episode on the ...
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