The Radio Hour will appeal to fans of Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry and highlights the extraordinary and unseen women who write the radio plays that provided enduring hours of entertainment for the nation.
Based on Victoria’s research into Gwen Meredith, the only female writer working at the ABC in the 1950s, who was the writer behind all of the episodes of the ABC’s biggest radio drama Blue Hills, The Radio Hour was also inspired by Victoria’s own time working at the ABC in the 1990s.
The year is 1956 and Martha Berry is a 50year old spinster who is one of the many invisible women working at the country’s national broadcaster. Martha is sent to work as a secretary for a new radio-serial, she ends up secretly ghost-writing scripts for the serial and creating storylines that resonate with the loyal audience of women listeners. When faced with exposure, she has to decide whether to remain in the shadows or step into the spotlight.
Victoria Purman is the bestselling fiction of author of titles including A Women’s Work, The Nurse’s War, The Women’s Pages, The Land Girls and The Last of the Bonegilla Girls.
Join us for this in-conversation and hear about Victoria’s research behind The Radio Hour and why Victoria wanted to give a voice to the unseen and gifted women behind the radio plays that kept the nation captivated.
