Ramona Koval

Ramona Koval is a distinguished writer, journalist and former broadcaster, renowned for her contributions to literature, journalism, and cultural commentary. Her work spans essays, books, interviews, broadcasting and academia, making her one of Australia’s most insightful voices on literature, culture, and the human experience.

Her recent essays include “A Stone Under History’s Wheel” in Ruptured: Jewish Women in Australia Reflect on Life Post October 7th (LJLA, 2025) and “For What Has Been and What Will Be” in Grandmothers: Essays by 21st-Century Grandmothers (Text Publishing, 2020). Her recent books include A Letter to Layla: Travels to Our Deep Past and Near Future (Text Publishing, 2020), Bloodhound – Searching for My Father (Text Publishing, 2015), and By the Book: A Reader’s Guide to Life (Text Publishing, 2013).

Ramona’s literary output also includes the novel Samovar (Heinemann, 1996), interview collections Speaking Volumes – Conversations with Remarkable Writers (Scribe, 2010; translated into Chinese and Portuguese), and the Jewish cookbook Jewish Cooking, Jewish Cooks (New Holland, 2001). She edited The Best Australian Essays 2011 and 2012 (Black Inc) and her first book, Eating Your Heart Out: Food, Shape and the Body Industry (Penguin, 1985). She has also written introductions for Text Classics editions of Helen Garner’s Cosmo Cosmolino (2012) and Elizabeth Harrower’s The Catherine Wheel (2014).

As a broadcaster, Ramona presented The Book Show (ABC Radio National, 2006–2011), Books and Writing (1995–2005), Drive on RN (1993–1994), and The Ramona Koval Program on ABC 774 Melbourne (1988–1992). Her programs were broadcast internationally through Radio Australia and as digital podcasts. She has produced documentary features for both the ABC and the BBC.

Her journalism includes reviews, features and columns for The Age, The Weekend Australian, The Saturday Paper, and Australian Book Review. Ramona has been a guest interviewer at international literary festivals in Edinburgh, Montreal, Berlin, Cheltenham, Auckland, Wellington and throughout Australia, with her interviews published in newspapers, magazines and online.

Before her media career, Ramona trained as a microbiologist and geneticist, and she has held academic appointments at RMIT University and University of Melbourne. Since 2022, she has been an Honorary Fellow in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, and from 2015 to 2021, an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne.

Ramona has served in leadership and advisory roles, including Staff Elected Director of the ABC Board (2002–2006), judge for the Walkley Awards for Journalism and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, board member of the Australian Book Review, and member of the International Advisory Board of the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal. She was awarded a Goethe Institute Fellowship in Berlin in 2001 and was a writer-in-residence at The Australia Centre, Berlin.

With a career that bridges literary scholarship, journalism, broadcasting and public engagement, Ramona Koval continues to enlighten and inspire audiences through storytelling, critical insight and cultural commentary.