Oliver Twist, the storyteller

Leah Purcell grew up in a small town caring for her mum Florence. Her options after graduation were nursing or working at the meatworks. But after a push from her meatworks boss, Leah defied her own expectations for herself (R)Leah is now an acclaimed actor, playwright, and stage ... Show More

Bundjalung man, Jack Manning Bancroft's scholarship to a prestigious Sydney University college showed him a rarefied world that shocked him, and he used his childhood grit to channel his energy into a world-changing project.Jack's mother is Bundjalung artist, Bronwyn Bancroft. Gr ... Show More

Yvonne Orley grew up on Aboriginal missions in NSW as the child of the matron and manager. But it turned out that Yvonne had much deeper connections to the country, and the people, that she knew at the time.Although her mother had tried to hide this part of the family story, it t ... Show More

On this episode of Our American Stories, the life of the youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Rudyard Kipling, was filled with tragedy. He survived a difficult childhood to go on to become one of the most celebrated authors of his day, penning such classics as ... Show More

Originally from Rwanda, stand-up comedian Oliver Twist spent 14 years in a Malawi refugee camp before finally arriving in Ipswich, Queensland with his family. In this Vulnerabilitea House, Oliver answers the question, “Where is home for you?” - a simple question for some, but a c ... Show More

Society has a set of stories it tells itself about who refugees are and what they look like, says documentarian and TED Fellow Feras Fayyad. With his films, he's on a mission to separate the facts about refugees from fiction, as a form of resistance -- for himself, his daughter a ... Show More

Today, an update on a story from the Kerning Cultures vault.Elie was a journalist looking for her next story when she met Ziad at a party in Istanbul. Ziad was a Syrian refugee hoping to travel to Europe and apply for asylum. Elie asked Ziad if she could follow him to Norway, his ... Show More

This week, Damon Galgut praises Diane Oliver's exceptional short stories, newly published over half a century after her death; and Rosemary Waugh on theatre director Yaël Farber's visceral engagement with Shakespearean tragedy.'Neighbors and Other Stories', by Diane Oliver'King L ... Show More

This week, Rosie's guest is the award winning playwright, actress and drag legend, Charles Busch.  One of the funniest broadway shows Rosie ever saw was Charles' The Tale of The Allergist's Wife and when deciding to produce Taboo on Broadway, he was THE only writer she wanted! Th ... Show More

A death-defying migrant's story... Said Reza Adib was a TV journalist in Afghanistan. In 2016, about to break a story about the sexual abuse of children by Afghan men in authority, he received a threat to his life. Reza fled across the border to Iran. But journalism was in his bl ... Show More

Singer-songwriter Labi Siffre discusses the life and work of Arthur Ransome. Siffre says that the Swallows and Amazons books taught him responsibility for his own actions and also a morality that has influenced and shaped him throughout his life. Series in which Matthew Parris in ... Show More

A brand new interpretation of the classical story The Oresteia begins a Greek Season at London's Almeida Theatre. How well does it bring an ancient story up-to-date? Czech writer Milan Kundera has just published his first novel for 12 years The Festival of InsignificanceIain Bank ... Show More

Sir Lenny Henry's new one man show - August in England gives an insight into the lives impacted by the Windrush scandal. In 2017, thousands of legal residents who arrived from Commonwealth countries from the late 1940s to early 1970s were misclassified as illegal immigrants and w ... Show More