Ramona Koval

Ramona Koval (born 1954, Melbourne) is an Australian broadcaster, writer and journalist.

Her parents were Yiddish-speaking survivors of The Holocaust who arrived in Melbourne from Poland in 1950.

Koval is known for her extended and in-depth interviews with significant writers. She has had a long and varied career on air in Australia on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio. She was presenter of the Radio National Drive program and the morning presenter on Melbourne's 3LO (now 774 ABC Melbourne) through the late 1980s and early 1990s and became a fixture in the literary world after joining Radio National's Books and Writing in 1994. Koval presented The Book Show, introduced by Radio National in 2006 to consolidate its various book programs. The Book Show was the world's only daily radio program devoted to the books, writing and publishing. She left the ABC in October 2011 to pursue her own writing.

She was appointed Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne in January 2015.

Koval has written several books, including a novel, Samovar, and a cookbook Jewish Cooking, Jewish Cooks. She has written for many newspapers and international journals, and her interviews have been published in book form. Her latest collection of Radio National interviews is Tasting Life Twice: Conversations with Remarkable Writers, published by ABC Books (2005).

Koval has travelled overseas extensively and documented conversations with some of the most exciting and respected authors writing in English, and she has made several radio documentaries. She is an active participant in the various Australian literary festivals, and has been invited to take part in international Literary festivals – including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Montreal's Blue Metropolis literary festival, the UK's Cheltenham Literature Festival.

In 1995 Koval won the Order of Australia Media Award for a series of radio programs entitled "Writing from the Centre" and broadcast on ABC Radio National.

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