Biographers in Conversation

By Gabriella

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Category: Books

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Episodes: 89

Description

Biographer Gabriella Kelly-Davies chats with biographers across the world about the myriad of choices they make while researching, writing and publishing life stories. In every episode, she explores elements of narrative strategy such as structure, use of fiction techniques, facts and truth, beginnings and endings and to what extent the writer interpreted the evidence rather than providing clues and leaving it to readers to do the interpreting themselves. She also asks how they researched their books; how they balanced a subject’s public, personal and inner lives; and ethical issues, such as privacy and revealing secrets.

Episode Date
Ian Hembrow: "Celsius: A Life and Death by Degrees"
May 06, 2026
Hester Kaplan: "Twice Born: Finding My Father In the Margins of Biography"
Apr 29, 2026
Helen Pitt: "The House" and "Luna Park"
Apr 22, 2026
Paul Kildea: "Chopin’s Piano: A Journey through Romanticism"
Apr 15, 2026
Sara Fitzgerald "The Silenced Muse: Emily Hale, T. S. Eliot, and the Role of a Lifetime"
Apr 08, 2026
Dr Theodore Ell "Lebanon Days: Memories of an ancient land through economic meltdown, a revolution of hope and surviving the 2020 Beirut explosion"
Apr 01, 2026
Deborah FitzGerald "Her Sunburnt Country: The Extraordinary Literary Life of Dorothea Mackellar"
Mar 25, 2026
Lucy Sussex & Megan Brown "Outrageous Fortunes: A Double Life of Crime"
Mar 18, 2026
Dava Sobel "The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science"
Mar 11, 2026
Jacqueline Kent "Inconvenient Women: Australian Radical Writers 1900-1970"
Mar 04, 2026
Mark Hussey "Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel"
Feb 25, 2026
Nicholas Boggs "Baldwin: A Love Story"
Feb 18, 2026
Francesca Wade "Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife"
Feb 11, 2026
Lance Richardson "True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen"
Feb 04, 2026
Frances Wilson "Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark"
Jan 28, 2026
Summer Series - Stephen J. Campbell: ”Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life”
Jan 21, 2026
Susan Wyndham "Elizabeth Harrower: The Woman in the Watch Tower"
Jan 14, 2026
Clare Wright OAM: "Näku Dhäruk - The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy"
Jan 07, 2026
Summer Series - Andrew Ford’s ”The Shortest History of Music”
Dec 31, 2025
Summer Series - Oliver Soden "Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat"
Dec 24, 2025
Josie McSkimming: "Gutsy Girls: Love, Poetry and Sisterhood"
Dec 17, 2025
Helen Trinca: "Looking for Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Harrower"
Dec 10, 2025
Dr Drusilla Modjeska: "A Woman’s Eye, Her Art: Reframing the Narrative through Art and Life"
Dec 03, 2025
Julie Summers' "British Vogue: The Biography of an Icon"
Nov 26, 2025
Diana Parsell "Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington’s Cherry Trees"
Nov 19, 2025
Dr Greg de Moore "Tom Wills: The Insubordinate Life of an Australian Sporting Legend"
Nov 12, 2025
Ray Boomhower: "The Ultimate Protest: Malcolm W. Browne, Thich Quang Duc, and the News Photograph That Stunned the World"
Nov 05, 2025
Dr Bron Bateman: "Women of a Certain Courage"
Oct 29, 2025
Stephen J. Campbell: "Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life"
Oct 22, 2025
Jillian Graham "Inner Song: A Biography of Margaret Sutherland"
Oct 15, 2025
David Veltman, Daniel Meister and Hans Renders Biography Across the Digitized Globe: Essays in Honour of Hans Renders
Oct 08, 2025
Shauna Bostock "Reaching Through Time: Finding My Family’s Stories"
Oct 01, 2025
Sebastian Smee: "Paris in Ruins: How Love, War and Art Gave Birth to Impressionism"
Sep 24, 2025
Heather Clark: "Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath"
Sep 17, 2025
Judith Brett: "Fearless Beatrice Faust: Sex, Feminism and Body Politics"
Sep 10, 2025
Charlotte Jacobs: 90 Seconds to Midnight: A Hiroshima Survivor’s Nuclear Odyssey
Sep 03, 2025
Sam Elkin: "Detachable Penis: A Queer Legal Saga"
Aug 27, 2025
Nathan Hobby "The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard"
Aug 20, 2025
Megan Marshall: "After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart"
Aug 13, 2025
Kate Legge: "Kindred: A Cradle Mountain Love Story"
Aug 06, 2025
Nikos Papastergiadis: "John Berger and Me"
Aug 03, 2025
Abbas El-Zein: "Bullet, Paper, Rock"
Jul 31, 2025
Yves Rees "Travelling to Tomorrow: The Modern Women Who Sparked Australia’s Romance with America"
Jul 23, 2025
Anna Beer: "Eve Bites Back: An Alternative History of English Literature"
Jul 16, 2025
Nicholas Clements & Henry Reynolds "Tongerlongeter: First Nations Leader and Tasmanian War Hero"
Jul 09, 2025
Patricia Meisol "A Heart Afire: Helen Brooke Taussig's Battle Against Heart Defects, Unsafe Drugs and Injustice In Medicine"
Jul 02, 2025
Jacqueline Kent "Bonjour, Mademoiselle! April Ashley and the Pursuit of a Lovely Life"
Jun 25, 2025
Robert Zaretsky "The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas"
Jun 18, 2025
Kiera Lindsey's "Wild Love: The Ambitions of Adelaide Ironside, the First Australian Artist to Astonish the World"
Jun 11, 2025
Sally Bayley: "The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place"
Jun 04, 2025
Lamisse Hamouda: "The Shape of Dust"
May 28, 2025
Kerrie Davies's "Miles Franklin Undercover: The Little-Known Years When She Created Her Own Brilliant Career"
May 21, 2025
Oliver Soden "Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat"
May 14, 2025
Kate Fullagar "Bennelong & Phillip: A History Unravelled"
May 07, 2025
Pamela Toler's "The Dragon from Chicago. The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany"
Apr 30, 2025
Ashleigh Wilson's "Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing"
Apr 23, 2025
Amy Reading's "The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker"
Apr 16, 2025
Patchen Barss "The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius"
Apr 09, 2025
Brenda Niall's "Joan Lindsay: The Hidden Life of the Woman Who Wrote Picnic at Hanging Rock"
Apr 02, 2025
Andrew Ford's "The Shortest History of Music"
Mar 26, 2025
Kate Kennedy's "Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound"
Mar 19, 2025
Bernadette Brennan's "Leaping into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears"
Mar 12, 2025
Helen Ennis' 'Max Dupain: A Portrait'
Mar 05, 2025
Anna Funder’s ‘Wifedom’: Restoring Visibility & Voice
Feb 28, 2025
Jacqueline Kent. A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life
Aug 29, 2024
Ashleigh Wilson: A Year with Wendy Whiteley: Conversations About Art, Life and Gardening
Aug 27, 2024
Christie Lowrance: Nature’s Ambassador
Aug 26, 2024
Laurie Gwen Shapiro: The Stowaway. A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica
Aug 21, 2024
Melanie Nolan: The ADB’s Story
Aug 14, 2024
Melinda M. Ponder. Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea
Aug 07, 2024
Judith Brett: The Enigmatic Mr Deakin
Jul 31, 2024
Joshua Kendall: The Man Who Made Lists. Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus.
Jul 24, 2024
Ryan Cropp: Donald Horne. A Life in the Lucky Country
Jul 17, 2024
Marcia Biederman: The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill, Abortion, Death and Concealment in Victorian New England
Jul 10, 2024
Cathy Perkins: The Shelf Life of Zora Cross
Jul 03, 2024
Carl Rollyson: The Life of William Faulkner
Jun 26, 2024
Sarah George: GAMU: The Dreamtime Stories, Life and Feelings of Big Bill Neidjie
Jun 19, 2024
Ann-Marie Priest: My Tongue Is My Own. A Life of Gwen Harwood
Jun 12, 2024
Mark McKenna: An Eye for Eternity. The Life of Manning Clark
Jun 05, 2024
Nancy Hurrell: The Egan Irish Harp
May 29, 2024
Brett Mason: Wizards of Oz
May 22, 2024
Joel Birnie: My People’s Songs: How an Indigenous Family Survived Colonial Tasmania
May 15, 2024
Nadia Wheatley: The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift
May 08, 2024
Kenneth Miller, Mapping the Darkness, The Visionary Scientists who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep (Part Two)
May 01, 2024
Kenneth Miller: Mapping the Darkness, The Visionary Scientists who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep (Part One)
Apr 24, 2024
Matthew Lamb: Frank Moorhouse. Strange Paths
Apr 17, 2024
Bernadette Brennan: A Writing Life. Helen Garner and her Work
Apr 09, 2024
Peter FitzSimons: The Opera House
Apr 02, 2024
Biographers in Conversation Sneak Peek
Feb 29, 2024