S1E1: People dig it

05/14/23 • 42 min

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 it straight away, and they love it”; “it works, it just works, it’s the little concept that could – it can fill a big space; it can also get little and quiet and beautiful”.
We introduce Bad Diaries Podcast, our hopes and plans for the podcast. The salons exist in the room in the moment, a contract between readers and audience, that you have to be there to experience. With the podcast, we want to create something to return to. We’ll talk all things diaries – our own, other people's, published and unpublished – and feature guest interviews with writers who've read at live salons, and with people publishing diaries, designing them, and using them in fiction, film and other media.

Find full show notes for this episode on the Bad Diaries Salon website baddiariessalon.com, or get in touch via Instagram or Facebook – we're @baddiariessalon everywhere.
Thanks for joining us for Bad Diaries Podcast! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review us, wherever you get your podcasts.
Bad Diaries Podcast is recorded and produced in Naarm Melbourne, Australia, on the lands of the Kulin Nation; and in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, on the iwi lands of Taranaki Whānui, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira. We pay our respects to Mana Whenua, and to Elders past, present and emerging, of these lands.

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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 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.

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S1E2: DiArama

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!), when she was scheduled to fly from Vancouver to Auckland on 11 September 2001.
Jenny reads from DiArama – her 1980s diaries that she blogged, pseudonymously, in the 2010s – from April 1983, featuring bands, beer, boys, bad TV, and re-reading Blyton.
We talk about the postures we assume, and the voices and ideas we try out, in our diaries.
Then we talk about My Mum’s Bad Diaries, the podcast in which Jenny reads her own diaries to her 20-something daughter. Season 1 – in 27 episodes, covering 1980 to 1981 – was released in 2022, and Season 2 – starting in 1982 – is out weekly in 2023.