Bad Diaries Podcast

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 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...

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, 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...

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 Tracy’s third (and as-yet unpublished) novel – which is full of triplets and other threes – has been shortlisted for the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize.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...

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 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...

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 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 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...