Robyn Ravlich
During a celebrated ABC radio career spanning more than three decades Robyn Ravlich produced and presented a range of unique radio works, rich in ideas and sound. A young poet and performance artist of mixed Croatian-Australian heritage, born in the outback mining town of Broken Hill, she moved to Sydney for university studies, and from 1975 forged a creative career in radio at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a writer and broadcaster, recognized for her distinctive, poetic approach to radio feature productions for The Listening Room, Into the Music and other innovative shows. ‘Ravlich’s own work, beautiful and alluring, is finely tuned to the intimate and poetic possibilities of radiophonic work and the voices it brings forth’ (N. Neumark in Voice Studies, Routledge, 2016).
Robyn Ravlich’s awards include Special Commendation at the Prix Italia, 4 Silver awards at the New York Radio Festivals in 2010, 2012 and 2016, and her radio documentary about asylum seekers On the Raft, All at Sea, was awarded both the Australian Human Rights & Equal Opportunities Commission Radio Award and the United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Prize for Radio, 2002. She continues to produce radio features as a freelancer and to write creative non-fiction, including an essay for the 2015-2016 MCA-Heide exhibition catalogue of the artist Aleks Danko. Her writing on radio garners praise: ‘The writing is elegant and eloquent and extends our understanding of the invisible architecture of the audio feature’; ‘She writes beautifully, but then she is a radio poet.’ (RadioDoc Review)
In 2019 Robyn Ravlich’s radio documentary on Robert Manne won Gold for Documentary, Human Relations at the New York Festivals Radio Awards, an international radio competition. To listen, click here
Robyn was a finalist in the 2019 Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism, shortlisted in the category Radio/Audio Feature for her program “Robert Manne’s Voice.” Robyn writes of the making of this as ‘This documentary is the closest I’ve come in a life’s work to capturing human communication at its richest, deepest, finest – and what I hope will be enduring resonance.’
Read Robyn Ravlich’s memories of poet Martin Johnson in Recollections here.