1--What is the title of your latest release?
THE RADIO HOUR
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
N/A
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The book is set in Sydney in 1956 – the year television arrived and signaled the beginning of the end of the golden years of radio in Australia.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
My protagonist is a fifty-year old “spinster”, Martha Berry, who decides that it’s never too late to be who you might have been – and stands up for herself amongst a load of incompetent men. She is very much my kind of gal!
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Under-appreciated, smart and loyal.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That one of the most influential women in Australian radio in the 1950s and 1960s – Grace Gibson – was actually a Texan from El Paso! She owned her own production company and made 30,000 episodes of radio serials which sold all over the world. We were canny enough to adopt her as one of our own and she lived here until she died in 1989, aged 84.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
A bit of both. I go back over the previous chapter when I open the manuscript and tidy it up. And then I do two of three more drafts of the whole novel before I submit to my publisher.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Fresh cherries. They are grown locally where I live (in South Australia) and one of the best things about Christmas in the southern hemisphere is fresh cherries for the Christmas table. Heavenly.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
I have a combination office/sewing room/dog napping area, which overlooks my backyard in suburban Adelaide. It’s a little green oasis into which the Kookaburras fy in the afternoons regaling us with their song.
10--Who is an author you admire?
SO many. But I would highlight Ann Patchett, Barbara Kingsolver and Kate Atkinson. I would read their shopping lists.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
It’s a book called “Nobody But Him” by... me! It was the first novel I ever attempted, and it won me a three-book publishing deal. Boy, did that change my life. Since then, I’ve published twenty books in Australia and I’m a full-time writer these days. When I have a book out, I get to travel all over Australia meeting readers and now, THE RADIO HOUR is being published in North America. All my writing dreams have come true thanks to that first book. I’m just so grateful.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I got the call on December 18, 2012. Well, it was an email. But the excitement was very much the same! I’d dreamt of being a published author since I was fifteen years old, but it seemed like an impossible dream, so I put it away while I had another few careers and three children with my husband. But I got to a stage when they were older when I began to think that if I didn’t try it, I would never know. And it worked.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
Because I write 20th century historical fiction, I try to read anything but! Crime, literary fiction, cozy crime, non-fiction. I read voraciously and widely because I firmly believe I can learn something from any book. And of course, I’ll be moved, entertained and enlightened all at the same time.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
“Dirty Dancing”. My Mum and I have a ritual every Christmas Day in which we have our family lunch and then we retire to the living room while the husband and our three sons clean up and we settle in to watch Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. I must have seen the movie thirty times, but I still cry every time they do the lift at the end. Every time!
15--What is your favorite season?
Autumn where I live is glorious. The leaves are turning, the weather is cooler (I live in the driest state in the driest continent on Earth, where we regularly hit 40 degrees and in summer – that’s 104 F) and the days are still long enough to sit outdoors, whether at home or at a restaurant and watch the world go by.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
My favorite way to celebrate my birthday is to be with family and dear friends. I don’t need anything else.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I’ve always loved Oprah Winfrey, so I’m diving into her new podcast. Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s “Wiser Than Me” is fantastic, too. “All There Is” by Anderson Cooper is heartbreaking and hopeful all at once, and “The Rest is Entertainment” with Richard Osman and Marina Hyde is a must listen.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Italian. I recently spent three weeks in Italy and the food did not disappoint. Now I just have to learn to make my own pasta...
19--What do you do when you have free time?
Reading, obviously. I love sewing and I’ve set myself the challenge in 2025 to refrain from buying any new clothes, so I’m going to be sewing much more from my fabric stash. And then there are the TV series and the podcasts and the films...
20--What can readers expect from you next?
I’m VERY superstitious about talking about The Next Book so the only thing I will say is that I’m writing it right now and loving it.
From USA TODAY bestselling author Victoria Purman comes an engaging, clever story about women’s work—often unseen—during Australia’s golden years of radio broadcasting.
Martha Berry is on the brink of fifty years old, unmarried, and one of an army of polite, invisible women who go to work each day at the country’s national broadcaster and get things done without fuss, fanfare, or reward.
When the network prepares to launch a new radio serial in the style of their longest running and most successful show, Martha is transferred to assist the newly hired Quentin Quinn, the man who will write and produce the drama. But Mr. Quinn is wholly unprepared and ill-equipped for the role, clueless about radio and work in general. He’d rather enjoy his cigarettes and imbibe over lengthy lunch breaks and cannot be bothered to call his secretary by her correct name.
Rather than see the new show canceled, Martha steps in to hire a cast and write the scripts for the new show. Her authentic, women-focused storyline snags an ever-growing audience of loyal fans—and causes a stir with management. And Quentin Quinn is more than happy to accept the credit. But Martha’s secret cannot remain hidden. All too soon she faces exposure and must decide if she will politely remain in the shadows—or boldly step into the spotlight.
The Radio Hour is at once a sharp satire exposing the lengths men once employed to keep women out of the workplace and a hopeful tale about how one woman proves her worth and unwittingly outsmarts them all.
Women's Fiction Historical [Harper Muse, On Sale: February 4, 2025, Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9781400348039 / ]
Award-nominated and multi-published Australian contemporary romance author Victoria Purman loves books, wine, chocolate, sad country music, hard rock songs and stories with happy ever afters. Writing romance means she regularly gets to indulge in all those things - as well as being forced into online pictorial research for her emotional, funny and smart love stories. In 2014, Victoria was a finalist in the RuBY Awards (the Romance Writers of Australia’s "Romantic Book of the Year" Awards) for the first book on her Boys of Summer series for Harlequin MIRA, Nobody But Him. That same year, she was named a finalist in the category "Favourite New Author 2013" by the Australian Romance Readers Association. Most days, she considers herself the luckiest woman in the world.
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