Science Write Now

In this episode, Jessica White chats with Tricia Dearborn and Benjamin Dodd about the inspiration for and writing of their recent poetry collections Autobiochemistry and Airplane Baby Banana Blanket.
Tricia Dearborn is a Sydney poet, writer and editor. Her work has been widely published in literary journals, and has also been featured in significant anthologies such as Contemporary Australian Poetry (Puncher & Wattmann, 2016) and The Best Australian Poems 2012 and 2010 (Black Inc.). She has been awarded four grants by the Australia Council for the Arts and a Residential Fellowship at Varuna, the Writers' House. Benjamin Dodds is a Sydney-based poet who grew up in the Riverina of New South Wales. His work has appeared in Best Australian Poems, Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, Meanjin, Southerly, Cordite, Rabbit, The Sun Herald and The Australian, and has also been broadcast on ABC Radio National.

Purchase Autobiochemistry : https://bit.ly/3jVwqvj
Purchase Airplane Baby Banana Blanket: https://bit.ly/3w4qR2D

The Science Write Now (SWN) Podcast is a 3x/monthly podcast for people who love science and the arts. If you’re interested in learning more about great books, plays, and films; writing, research or editing; the lives of scientists; and creative insights into contemporary science ... then you’ve come to the right place!
The SWN Podcast is hosted by Amanda Niehaus and Jessica White and produced by Taylor Mitchell with funding from the Australia Council for the Arts.
You can also find and follow us online - on Twitter - on Instagram - and on Facebook!

Our opening song is 'Balmain' by Pure Milk: https://www.triplejunearthed.com/artist/pure-milk.html

Enjoyed this episode? Share the SWN love!
If you liked this episode, leave us a review and share it far and wide.
Science Write Now is dedicated to accessibility, connectivity, inspiration and collaboration across disciplines. Our content is free to access and we want to keep it that way, so if you’re keen to be part of this growing community of creative writing inspired by science, hit subscribe!

We’ll be back with another episode soon, and more conversations inspired by science and creativity to come!

We acknowledge the Jaegara and Turrbal People, Traditional Owners of the land on which this podcast is created, and the unceded cultural lands on which our guests live and continue to make and tell stories.

In this episode, Jess chats with Laura Elvery about her new collection of short stories, 'Ordinary Matter,' which is inspired by the twenty women who have won the Nobel Prize for science. You can purchase 'Ordinary Matter' here: https://bit.ly/3FP983B
Laura Elvery is one of Australia’s most beloved short story writers. She has won the Josephine Ulrick Prize for Literature, the Margaret River Short Story Competition, the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize and the Fair Australia Prize for Fiction, and has been published in Meanjin, Overland, The Saturday Paper, Island, Australian Financial Review, The Big Issue Fiction Edition and Griffith Review.
Cheat Sheet (texts mentioned)
Madame Curie: A Biography by Ève Curie
Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres by Catherine Brady
The Science Write Now (SWN) Podcast is a 3x/monthly podcast for people who love science and the arts. If you’re interested in learning more about great books, plays, and films; writing, research or editing; the lives of scientists; and creative insights into contemporary science ... then you’ve come to the right place!
The SWN Podcast is hosted by Amanda Niehaus and Jessica White and produced by Taylor Mitchell with funding from the Australia Council for the Arts.
You can also find and follow us online - on Twitter - on Instagram - and on Facebook!

Our opening song is 'Balmain' by Pure Milk: https://www.triplejunearthed.com/artist/pure-milk.html

Enjoyed this episode? Share the SWN love!
If you liked this episode, leave us a review and share it far and wide.
Science Write Now is dedicated to accessibility, connectivity, inspiration and collaboration across disciplines. Our content is free to access and we want to keep it that way, so if you’re keen to be part of this growing community of creative writing inspired by science, hit subscribe!

We’ll be back with another episode soon, and more conversations inspired by science and creativity to come!

We acknowledge the Jaegara and Turrbal People, Traditional Owners of the land on which this podcast is created, and the unceded cultural lands on which our guests live and continue to make and tell stories.

In this episode, Jessica White chats with Rebecca Giggs about her beautiful nonfiction book Fathoms: The World in the Whale and how she translates abstracted aspects of the ecological emergency—like its unfathomable scale—into a visceral narrative that is relatable for readers.
Rebecca Giggs is an award-winning author from Perth, Australia. Rebecca writes about how people feel toward animals in a time of ecological crisis and technological change. Her debut nonfiction book, Fathoms: The World in the Whale, came out in 2020 with Simon & Schuster (US), and Scribe (Aus/UK). In the US Fathoms was awarded the prestigious 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. The book also listed as a finalist in the Kirkus Prize and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. In Australia, Fathoms won the 2020 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Prize for Literature, the Royal Zoological Society's Whitley Award for Popular Zoology, and the WA Premier's Prize for an Emerging Writer. It was also shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize — Australia's most renown award for writing by women and non-binary authors in any genre. Recently the book was distinguished by being 'Highly Commended' in the shortlist for the 2021 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation.

Rebecca's essays and articles have appeared in Best Australian Science Writing and Best Australian Essays, as well as in The Atlantic, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, and Griffith Review. Her topics span jellyfish swarms, how sea-turtles fare in heatwaves, the history of leeches as weather prediction devices, and whether cows have friends.
Purchase Fathoms: The World in the Whale: https://bit.ly/2ZEy2Ck

The Science Write Now (SWN) Podcast is a 3x/monthly podcast for people who love science and the arts. If you’re interested in learning more about great books, plays, and films; writing, research or editing; the lives of scientists; and creative insights into contemporary science ... then you’ve come to the right place!
The SWN Podcast is hosted by Amanda Niehaus and Jessica White and produced by Taylor Mitchell with funding from the Australia Council for the Arts.
You can also find and follow us online - on Twitter - on Instagram - and on Facebook!

Our opening song is 'Balmain' by Pure Milk: https://www.triplejunearthed.com/artist/pure-milk.html

Enjoyed this episode? Share the SWN love!
If you liked this episode, leave us a review and share it far and wide.
Science Write Now is dedicated to accessibility, connectivity, inspiration and collaboration across disciplines. Our content is free to access and we want to keep it that way, so if you’re keen to be part of this growing community of creative writing inspired by science, hit subscribe!

We’ll be back with another episode soon, and more conversations inspired by science and creativity to come!

We acknowledge the Jaegara and Turrbal People, Traditional Owners of the land on which this podcast is created, and the unceded cultural lands on which our guests live and continue to make and tell stories.

In this episode, Jess talks to Claire Bowen and Kevin Vinsen about Storyburst, a writing project that they established in 2020. They invited Australian writers of all ages to collaborate with researchers to write science-inspired monologues. The monologues can be performed in any of 15 languages including Auslan, and
can include diverse performance styles such as puppetry, dance, and song.
Claire Bowen

Claire has been a storyteller since she was able to read and write. She has a Bachelor of Arts from UWA, specialising in Holocaust History and the Myths of Britain, and she completed an Honours Thesis concerned with the distortion of history in Science Fiction and Fantasy genre literature.

Claire was a founding member of the Stages WA Writing Group and was instrumental in implementing the workshops and monologue performance nights that developed the group to the point of producing their work in a festival. When Stages WA was defunded during George Brandis’ raid on the Australian Council for the Arts, the group became Western Edge Performance Writers, and they initiated and managed a monologue competition at their own expense for five years. Claire was the co-creator, co-producer and writer of two comedy stage plays that enjoyed sold-out runs at The Blue Room in the Perth Fringeworld Festival, then worked to develop the script A Scandal in the Weimar for wit incorporated which was professionally staged in Melbourne in 2017.

Claire relocated to Melbourne to become a company member of wit incorporated for the 2017 and 2018 seasons. She has completed production roles for the National Indigenous Dance Forum and Yirramboi First Nation Arts Festival in 2017 and was the recipient of Maribyrnong City Council art development grants in 2017 and 2018. Claire has had a monologue performed in Baggage Productions’ Madwomen Monologues in both 2018 and 2022. After returning to Perth, Claire and Kevin co created StoryBursts in 2020, a writing program that invites Australian writers of all ages to collaborate with researchers and write science-inspired monologues. The monologues can be performed in any of 15 languages including Auslan, and can include diverse performance styles such as puppetry, dance, and song. The first collection of monologues were showstoppers in Italian, Thiinma and English, with one by 10-year old who illustrations were animated to create a very charming video on Supernovas.

Kevin Vinsen

A/Prof Kevin Vinsen: Kevin’s main research interests are ExaScale computing for data intensive astronomy, developing methods for the automated classification of galaxies and gravitational waves using multi-wavelength data, machine learning algorithms and modelling complex systems. Kevin considers himself one of the luckiest geeks on the planet. He is paid to do what he loves - astronomy and computing with some of the biggest, baddest, computers on the planet. He has spoken at events such as Raise the Bar, TedX and MALA. He is passionate about conducting STEM outreach in West Australian schools and volunteers at the Perth Children’s Hospital with Starlight Children’s Foundation.

The Science Write

Enjoyed this episode? Share the SWN love!
If you liked this episode, leave us a review and share it far and wide.
Science Write Now is dedicated to accessibility, connectivity, inspiration and collaboration across disciplines. Our content is free to access and we want to keep it that way, so if you’re keen to be part of this growing community of creative writing inspired by science, hit subscribe!

We’ll be back with another episode soon, and more conversations inspired by science and creativity to come!

We acknowledge the Jaegara and Turrbal People, Traditional Owners of the land on which this podcast is created, and the unceded cultural lands on which our guests live and continue to make and tell stories.

In this episode, Jessica White chats with James Bradley, Donna Mazza, and Chris Flynn about the inspiration for and writing of their recent novels Ghost Species, Fauna and Mammoth—all of which consider the implications of de/extinction and, in one case, talking megafauna.
James Bradley OAM is widely recognised as one of Australia’s greatest critics and climate fiction writers—including the multi-award-winning, science-inspired novels Ghost Species(2020, Penguin), Clade (2015, Penguin) and Deep Field (2000, Henry Holt). Donna Mazza writes fiction and poetry, and is author of Fauna (2020, Allen & Unwin) and The Albanian(2007, Fremantle Press), which was a TAG Hungerford Award winner. Donna teaches at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. Chris Flynn is the author of three acclaimed novels—Mammoth (2020, Text), The Glass Kingdom (2014, Text), and A Tiger in Eden (2012, Text). Mammoth was shortlisted for the 2021 Indie Book Awards Fiction prize.

The Science Write Now (SWN) Podcast is a 3x/monthly podcast for people who love science and the arts. If you’re interested in learning more about great books, plays, and films; writing, research or editing; the lives of scientists; and creative insights into contemporary science ... then you’ve come to the right place!
The SWN Podcast is hosted by Amanda Niehaus and Jessica White and produced by Taylor Mitchell with funding from the Australia Council for the Arts.
You can also find and follow us online - on Twitter - on Instagram - and on Facebook!

Our opening song is 'Balmain' by Pure Milk: https://www.triplejunearthed.com/artist/pure-milk.html

Enjoyed this episode? Share the SWN love!
If you liked this episode, leave us a review and share it far and wide.
Science Write Now is dedicated to accessibility, connectivity, inspiration and collaboration across disciplines. Our content is free to access and we want to keep it that way, so if you’re keen to be part of this growing community of creative writing inspired by science, hit subscribe!

We’ll be back with another episode soon, and more conversations inspired by science and creativity to come!

We acknowledge the Jaegara and Turrbal People, Traditional Owners of the land on which this podcast is created, and the unceded cultural lands on which our guests live and continue to make and tell stories.