Les Murray (Australia’s unofficial Poet Laureate)

I worked as a journalist and presenter for many years on radio and TV. For 9 years I was the voice of Australia on the ABC’s international arm, Radio Australia, hosting a current affairs/chat style show, interviewing the major minds of our time, along the big names in arts, including most of the Booker Prize winners of the last 20 years, James Bonds, dancers, Shakespeareans and musicians. In 2013 I was recognized with a Highly Commended in the International Radio Personality category of the Asians Broadcasting Union awards. This added to my shortlisting in the same category in the worldwide Association of International Broadcasting awards. My solo show from Guangzhou in China in 2007 was the ABC’s first English broadcast from mainland China. I also presented shows from Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Samoa. For many years I was a regular presenter on the News Breakfast program on the ABC News 24 television network, and a guest presenter on Insiders with Barrie Cassidy on Sunday mornings on ABC1. I also filled-in in for presenters Jon Faine and Lindy Burns on ABC 774 Melbourne, and on the drive show on ABC 702 in Sydney. I am a regular correspondent on Radio New Zealand, and has hosted their premier current affairs show, Morning Report. My third book Someone Else’s War, a novel based on the life of my Greek spy grandmother, sold out its first edition in three months. The Greek translation went into reprint in Europe in 3 weeks. I've worked in South Africa training SABC journalists in the months after Nelson Mandela came to power. He was also the ABC’s National Journalism trainer; a political reporter for ABC TV News, and worked for UNICEF in Vietnam. For a Churchill Fellowship in 2002, I travelled to the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany and the Netherlands to study how journalists are trained to deal with trauma. During this trip I lectured at the University of Washington & Michigan State University, and gave a seminar at Oxford. My findings were published widely across the world. I currently teach journalism at RMIT University in Melbourne, and is doing a PhD on the methodology of writing true stories in novel format. I am also working on transposing Someone Else’s War into a one-woman play. View all posts by Phil Kafcaloudes