Unfolded Podcast: Showcasing Short Stories

 The short story has faded from cultural relevance as periodical magazines, which published such short fiction with fanfare, disappeared. Yet, the short story remains emblematic of great fiction. Collections such as The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield, Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger, and Nightfall and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov are examples of the format at its best and most popular.

Podcasting, as per its experimental nature, tends to seek out and tinker with such genres. Today's feature podcast is from Australia.

Unfolded is a University of Melbourne podcast featuring original audio fiction from Australian writers, combined with in-depth interviews exploring the story's inspiration. It highlights short stories and provides behind-the-scenes insights into the writing process, featuring authors such as Chris Flynn, Claire G. Coleman, and Tony Birch 

The show's objective is to bring original audio-fictions and deep-dive author interviews together. It showcases short stories, aiming to explore the "story behind the story."

The show is produced with support from the Melbourne Public Humanities Initiative on unceded Wurundjeri land.

As Australian podcast consultant Courtney Cathy says: "The first episode of the second season of Unfolded is out. These short stories by Australian writers are read by actors and treated with a unique soundscape."

 Seth Robinson is a writer, producer and academic based in Naarm/Melbourne. He is the Creative Producer for the Melbourne Public Humanities Initiative, and a Lecturer at the University of Melbourne.

Robinson wrote about the podcast: "Short stories are one of the most underrated kinds of fiction. Where a novel might be considered a marathon, a short story is a sprint. They’re weird and wonderful, the perfect place for writers to break genres and play with different forms and ideas. They’re also perfectly suited to podcasts. 2500 words is roughly twenty-minutes. A dog walk, or a tram ride.

There are plenty of podcasts that do this well, some showcase bite size fictions, or serialize longer pieces. Other podcasts offer interviews with writers, interrogating where they get their ideas from, or going into the details of their writing practice. But there are few (if any) podcasts that bring these two concepts together."

Robinson continues: "This is where the idea for Unfolded came from. Record original audio-fictions, then do a deep-dive with the author, to get specific on the ins-and-outs of that story. For anyone who has ever heard Song Exploder, it’s like that, but for stories. It’s turned out to be something of a beautiful experiment, as season one of Unfolded features stories of a human-fox transformation, a first-date pig hunt, a talking table, a nervous mother, a gardener who lusts after dirt, and an interstellar navigator. Each of these stories were brought to life by alumni actors from the Victorian College of the Arts, all of whom brought something unique, and strangely magical to their interpretations."