I’ve got a food-related radio feature coming up. My Life in Cookbooks goes to air this Sunday 4 August on ABC Radio National’s 360documentaries program. It’s written and narrated by me (with contributions from keen and not-so-keen cooks), produced by Lea Redfern and sound engineered by Russell Stapleton.

A personal library reflects the passions and preoccupations of the collector, and cookbooks are no exception. From my own shelves I measure out a narrative in several chapters—from (almost) the very first cookbook I bought as a university student in the late 1970s (The Pauper’s Cookbook) to the one I bought last month (Plenty).

Cookbooks reflect the societies that produce them. My Life in Cookbooks is about reading between the lines and against the grain. It’s about the allure and shortcomings of cookbooks. The feasts they promise and the meals they serve up. It’s about changing notions of gender and domesticity. About multicultural Australia. And it’s my individual take on our complex relationship with food and cooking.

Hope you can listen to it—here are the details:

My Life in Cookbooks
ABC Radio National: 360documentaries
Sunday 4 August at 10:00 am. Repeated Friday 9 August at 2:00 pm
You can also listen online and download the program for 4 weeks from initial broadcast.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/360/