For former Today news presenter Brooke Boney, telling a story comes second nature to her. Being the subject of that story, however, feels a little peculiar.
“I’ve spent so much of my life being the person who’s read the book and you’re asking the questions and you’re thinking about what sort of story to write or pull together,” she admits to WHO. “As a journalist, it feels so unnatural to insert yourself into your own storytelling.”
It was a feeling the 37-year-old certainly had to put aside while writing her very first book, All of It. The tome is a collection of personal essays, touching on everything from fame and fertility to career progression and Indigenous identity. And it’s something Boney says was constantly in the back of her mind.
“I’d always wanted to write a book, but I didn’t know what form it was going to take. I toyed around with a couple of different formats, and then I settled on a book of essays, because that was the sort of thing that I was reading most often, like Nora Ephron and Bell Hooks,” she explains. “It’s the perfect marriage of the things that I like writing because it’s kind of journalistic in parts and then also inserting a bit of my own experience into things.”
Experience is something Boney has in spades. From scoring a gig as a political correspondent for NITV early in her career to covering red carpets in Los Angeles as Today’s news and entertainment presenter – a job she resigned from last year to take up an opportunity to complete a Master of Public Policy at Oxford University – the proud Gamilaroi woman has had a glittering career so far. But despite the book being billed by some as a memoir, Boney confesses she doesn’t feel “quite ready yet” to write one.
“It’s kind of like a ‘to be continued’,” she admits of the book. “Because I think I’m at this juncture now where I’ve stepped away from Today, and I’m studying now and I really don’t know what’s next. So I think I don’t want to cut the story short.”
While it’s evident Boney is set for even more fabulous things career-wise, her book also highlights there might be a few other things on her agenda. In 2021, the journalist publicly shared her decision to freeze her eggs – a subject she happily elaborates on in All of It. And while fertility may feel like a very personal subject, Boney hopes her candidness gives others “a nudge”.
“I really want to impress upon young women how important and liberating it felt for me to be able to go through that,” she notes. “I think for me, it was a question of being able to have the idea that I might have a little bit more control over those parts that feel completely mysterious or fated or at the whim of the universe – maybe there’s something that we can do to sort of make our dreams come true if we want to be mothers.”
Likewise, on other topics that feel a little taboo, Boney hopes to help shed the shame. “Some of these themes are so, so common and maybe they shouldn’t be so private,” she says. “When we think about fertility or domestic violence or the way that we are in relationships, there’s such negative connotations with them, but I hope that when people read it, they see that it’s almost a universal experience and that we don’t need to feel like it’s something we should hide or something we should suffer in silence over.
“We have these sort of rules about things that we talk about and things that we don’t – things we think are OK and comfortable, then things that we sort of deem a bit too taboo. But the truth of it is that we will go through them, so we may as well help each other.”
All of It by Brooke Boney is out now, buy it here.
