Ramona Koval is a writer, journalist, and former broadcaster.

She is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University.

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, By the Book: A reader’s guide to life (Text Publishing) 2013

She is the author of a novel, Samovar (Heinemann) 1996, of collections of interviews, Speaking Volumes – conversations with remarkable writers (Scribe) 2010 , also translated into Chinese and Portuguese), of a Jewish cook book, Jewish Cooking, Jewish Cooks (New Holland) 2001, and she edited The Best Australian Essays 2011 and The Best Australian Essays 2012 (Black Inc). Her first book was Eating your heart out : food, shape and the body industry. (Penguin) 1985.

She has written introductions for the Text Classics publications of Helen Garner’s Cosmo Cosmolino (2012)  and Elizabeth Harrower’s The Catherine Wheel  (2014), and contributed essays to a variety of publications.

Broadcasting for ABC Radio National she presented The Book Show 2006 – 2011, Books and Writing 1995 – 2005 Drive on RN 1993 – 1994, On ABC 774 Melbourne The Ramona Koval Program ran from 1988 – 1992. Her programs were broadcast internationally through Radio Australia, and in digital podcasts.

She has written reviews, features and columns for newspapers including The Age and The Weekend Australian, writing on issues of the day. She has made documentary features for radio, which have been broadcast both by the ABC and the BBC.

Transcripts of her interviews have appeared in international newspapers, magazines and in digital form, and she has been a guest interviewer at International literary festivals in Edinburgh, Montreal, Berlin, Cheltenham, Auckland, Wellington and all over Australia.

She has worked as an academic at RMIT University and the University of Melbourne, and before that as a microbiologist and geneticist.

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

For seven years, from 2015 to 2021, she was an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne.

‘She’s a shining presence in the world of literature, here in Australia and right across the globe…[her writing is] full of wit and beauty and grace…Her voice is always recognisable, invigorating, familiar to us and greatly loved: the voice of a highly literate woman.’

Helen Garner