Elwood Writers on “Best of Cover to Cover 2023”

Happy New Year from Elwood Writers.

Tune in to Vision Australia Radio (VAR) this Friday at 1:00pm (AEDT) for another chance to hear our tribute to Jennifer Bryce on Cover to Cover (CTC), originally broadcast on 4 August last year, and now featuring in The Best of CTC 2023.

As always, you can listen on the radio if you’re in Australia, or online from anywhere in the world. Details can be found at the VAR website – just click here for more info.

First post of 2024, and the new year is less than 12 hours old. We’re hitting the ground running. Jenny would be proud.

Here’s hoping for a safe and peaceful 2024.

Elwood Writers shares the celebration: 500 Cover to Cover episodes

This Friday marks the 500th edition of Vision Australia Radio’s weekly literary program Cover to Cover. Produced and hosted by Tim McQueen, the program delivers book readings and short stories to an audience not just in Australia but across the globe.

Elwood Writers has a long history of contributing to Cover to Cover, starting with our very first dedicated broadcast – appropriately titled ‘Starting Over’ – back in January 2015. That was episode 38 of Cover to Cover. Our latest program was a tribute to our much loved and missed co-founder Jennifer Bryce (episode 484), which aired on 4 August this year.

Many congratulations to Tim and the entire team at Cover to Cover. Happy 500th episode! We’ll be listening.

Podcast: Cover to Cover Ep. 484 | Tribute to Jennifer Bryce

The Elwood Writers tribute to colleague and friend Jennifer Bryce was broadcast on Vision Australia Radio’s Cover to Cover last Friday, 4 August 2023 (repeated Sunday 6 August). If you missed the program, or if you’d like to listen again, it’s now available as a podcast at the link below:

The recording can also be accessed via the MP3 audio-file below:

We hope you enjoy this celebration of Jenny’s life and work.

Best wishes,

A Life Celebrated On Radio

Do tune in to Cover to Cover on Vision Australia Radio (VAR) this Friday evening at 8:00pm (AEST) to hear our tribute to Jennifer Bryce, our friend and colleague who co-founded Elwood Writers in 2007. Jenny died in April, and we were invited by Tim McQueen, presenter and producer of Cover to Cover, to put together a one-hour program honouring her life and work.

Our program focusses on Jenny’s literary and musical achievements, and features recordings of Jenny reading her stories ‘Memories of Adelaide’ and ‘So This Is Winter’. Barry reads Jenny’s short-story ‘Benjamin’, and Helen reads Jenny’s essay about the music she commissioned for the trio Ensemble Françaix. There are tributes and musical interludes, and Margaret does the honours in holding the program together with her wonderfully informative intros and links.

We reached the edge of the old Luna Park – mainly ruins – a few broken fences where it had once been secured because the structure was unsafe. Sure enough, the waters were receding quite dramatically. We stood and watched as the man-in-the-moon mouth sucked up the waters and regurgitated them out to sea, wheezing and gurgling to the beat of some unknown subterranean rhythm. Towers still tottered over the entrance, barely supporting a few fragile wooden slats – all that remained of the scenic railway. A wind sprang up, further agitating the swirling water, and for just a moment I could hear a clattering like the old train, and squeals as the carriages swooped through a tunnel.
from ‘So This Is Winter’ by Jennifer Bryce

You can listen to the program online from anywhere in the world – just hit the ‘listen live’ button on the VAR homepage. Or if you’d prefer going old-school, the radio frequency and tuning details are also on the website. You’ll find everything you need at the link below:

https://radio.visionaustralia.org

The program will be repeated on Sunday afternoon at 1:00pm, and we’ll share the podcast on this site as soon as it’s available.

Why not lose yourself for an hour in stories and music – we’d love you to join us in celebrating Jenny. Whenever and however you choose to listen, you’ll enjoy the warmest of welcomes …

Huge thanks go as always to Tim McQueen and the team at Vision Australia Radio for promoting and supporting the work of writers everywhere.

Literary Fortnight

The Best Of Cover To Cover 2022: on Vision Australia Radio over two weeks from Monday to Friday at 1:00pm (AEST) 26 December to 6 January. That’s ten of the best episodes from this year.

We don’t know for sure which day the Elwood Writers ‘Adelaide’ program will re-air, but a little bird tells us it might be Thursday 29 December.

To avoid missing out, make this a literary holiday season and listen to all the broadcasts. What better way to transit from one year to the next than by immersing yourself in stories and the soothing sounds of spoken words.

Listening details and further info can be found at the link below:

https://radio.visionaustralia.org

However you choose to spend it, have a safe and peaceful festive period.

Happy writing, reading, and listening.

Best of Cover to Cover 2022 | Vision Australia Radio

We’re excited to learn that this year’s special Elwood Writers edition of Cover To Cover on Vision Australia Radio (VAR) has been selected for the Best Of Cover To Cover 2022, which will run on VAR between 26 December and 6 January. Our program’s theme is ‘Adelaide’, and it was first broadcast over the Easter weekend.

So if you missed our show the first time round, or if you would just welcome the chance to hear it again, tune in to hear us reading our own stories on-air. We don’t have specific timings yet, but we’ll provide more details as we get them.

Thanks as always to Tim McQueen and the team at Vision Australia Radio for their ongoing support of Elwood Writers and our work.

More soon. In the meantime, happy reading, writing and listening!

podcast: all about Adelaide, on Cover to Cover

The podcast of last week’s special episode of Cover to Cover is now available. The program features Elwood Writers and our individual takes on the theme of ‘Adelaide’. If you’d like to listen to, download, or share the podcast, or browse previous episodes of Cover to Cover or other Vision Australia Radio programs, visit the following link:

https://omny.fm/shows/cover-to-cover/cover-to-cover-episode-416-15th-april-2022

If you don’t want to move away from this page, you can dive straight in and listen now, below:

Cover to Cover Episode 416 15th April 2022

Thanks as always to Tim McQueen and the team at Vision Australia Radio.

We hope you enjoy the show. Happy listening,

Elwood Writers

Let’s hear it for Adelaide

Barry first visited Adelaide Writers’ Week in 2008, when Elwood Writers wasn’t yet one year old. The event took place every two years back then, and he enjoyed it so much he went to the subsequent weeks in 2010 and 2012. Thereafter, Writers’ Week became an annual affair, and the other members of Elwood Writers began to attend. Since then, one or all of us has attended almost every year. We had a break in 2021 because of pandemic restrictions, and our only representative this year was Jennifer, but it’s fair to say that Adelaide has been and continues to be important to us, and not just because of its literary festival.

And so last year we suggested ‘Adelaide’ as the theme for a brand new Cover to Cover program for Vision Australia Radio. The program’s presenter Tim McQueen liked the idea, and we’ve been putting together our pieces, including selecting musical interludes, over the past few months. We were particularly excited to have the opportunity to record our work last week at Vision Australia Radio, as access to the studios had been restricted until recently.

5 April 2022: Helen reading her poetry at the Vision Australia Radio studios in Melbourne

The program is almost ready to air, and will be broadcast over the Easter weekend, on Friday 15 April at 8:00PM (AEST), repeated Sunday 17 April at 1:00PM . Listen on the radio in Australia (check the VAR website for state-by-state broadcast variations) or online via the ‘listen live’ option from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. A recording of the show will be available to download after broadcast, and we’ll be sharing that here on our website.

So whether you tune in or connect on the day, catch the repeat on the Sunday, or download the recording, we hope you enjoy the show.

Happy listening!

‘Adelaide’: an upcoming Cover to Cover presentation on Vision Australia Radio

The city of Adelaide in South Australia is very special to Elwood Writers. Over the last fifteen years, we’ve regularly attended Writers’ Week, part of the annual Adelaide Festival. Our last visit was in 2020, just before the world started to close down. None of us was able to go in 2021. But Jennifer is planning to be there this year, and we’re looking forward to her dispatches from the beating heart of the festival. No pressure, Jenny.

But right now we’re all excited to be creating and refining the material for a brand new edition of Cover to Cover on Vision Australia Radio, with Adelaide front and centre as the unifying theme. The program is taking shape, and broadcast has tentatively been scheduled for Friday 15 April (repeated Sunday 17 April).

This will be the eighth edition of Cover to Cover featuring Elwood Writers, and we’re grateful as ever to producer Tim McQueen and the entire team at Vision Australia Radio for their ongoing support of the group.

Stay tuned for more details over the next couple of months. If you’d like to be notified of new blog posts, click the ‘follow’ button near the top of this page. And don’t forget you can show your love for any of our posts by hitting the ‘like’ button or letting us know in the comments below.

Happy reading and writing,

Elwood Writers

Back in March …

Back in March, Helen read a selection of work from the Elwood Writers anthology Every Second Tuesday, on Castlemaine’s 94.9 MAINfm program The Quiet Carriage. The four pieces were: ‘Ironing’ by Margaret McCaffrey; ‘On a Sunday Morning’ by Jennifer Bryce; ‘Deluge’ and ‘Stark against the sky’ by Helen McDonald.

In case you missed the original broadcast, the recording can be found here. The Elwood Writers segment kicks in around the 33-minute mark, though we’d recommend listening to the entire show. If at any time you fancy another listen, the sound file will soon be accessible within the podcasts and recordings area of this website.

The Quiet Carriage is MAINfm’s dedicated literature show all about books and authors, hosted by Paul J Laverty every Friday at 1:00pm. More details including listening info is available here.

Thanks to Paul and the station for supporting our work so enthusiastically, and to Helen for reading it so beautifully.

Happy listening!

Elwood Writers