Biographer Gabriella Kelly-Davies chats with biographers across the world about the multiplicity of choices they make while researching, writing and publishing life stories.
In each 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 writers 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.
We live and work on Gadigal Land. I’d like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of this land and pay my respects to the Elders both past and present.
Jacqueline Kent: A Certain Style. Beatrice Davis: A Literary Life
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Jacqueline Kent chats with Gabriella about her choices while writing A Certain Style. Beatrice Davis: A Literary Life, the biography of Beatrice Davis, Australia’s doyenne of publishing.
Read More 
Ashleigh Wilson: Wendy Whiteley: Conversations About Art, Life and Gardening
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Ashleigh Wilson chats with Gabriella about the choices he made while writing A Year with Wendy Whiteley: Conversations About Art, Life and Gardening.
Read More 
Christie Lowrance: Nature’s Ambassador
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Christie Lowrance chats with Gabriella about her choices while writing Nature’s Ambassador: The Legacy of Thornton W. Burgess, the children’s author and naturalist.
Read More 
Laurie Gwen Shapiro: The Stowaway. A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Laurie Gwen Shapiro chats with Gabriella about the choices she made while writing The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica, the true story of Billy Gawronski, a New York teenager, who stowed away on a ship bound for Antarctica in 1928.
Read More 
Melanie Nolan: The ADB’s Story
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Melanie Nolan, Director of Australia’s National Centre of Biography, chats with Gabriella about her book, The ADB’s Story, the history of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB).
Read More 
Melinda M. Ponder. Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Melinda Ponder shares with Gabriella her choices while writing the biography of the nineteenth century poet, writer, teacher and social activist, Katharine Lee Bates.
Read More 
Judith Brett: The Enigmatic Mr Deakin
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Judith Brett, the acclaimed political historian, chats with Gabriella about her choices while writing The Enigmatic Mr Deakin, the biography of Alfred Deakin, Australia’s second Prime Minister. The Enigmatic Mr Deakin won the 2018 National Biography Award and was shortlisted in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, NSW Premier’s History Awards and Queensland Literary Awards.
Read More 
Joshua Kendall: The Man Who Made Lists. Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus.
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Joshua Kendall chats with Gabriella about his choices while writing The Man Who Made Lists, his biography of Peter Mark Roget, the eighteenth-century polymath who created the legendary Roget’s Thesaurus.
Read More 
Ryan Cropp: Donald Horne. A Life in the Lucky Country
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Ryan Cropp shares with Gabriella the multiplicity of choices he made while writing Donald Horne. A Life in the Lucky Country, the biography of Donald Horne, a prominent and outspoken Australian journalist, writer, public intellectual and social critic. Last week, The State Library of NSW shortlisted A Life in the Lucky Country for the 2024 National Biography Award.
Read More 
Marcia Biederman: The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Marcia Biederman shares with Gabriella her approach to writing The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill, Abortion, Death and Concealment in Victorian New England.
Read More 
Cathy Perkins: The Shelf Life of Zora Cross
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Cathy Perkins chats with Gabriella about the choices she made while writing The Shelf Life of Zora Cross, the biography of Zora Cross, a prolific writer who caused a literary sensation in 1917 with her provocative series of erotic sonnets that celebrated sexual passion.
Read More 
Carl Rollyson: The Life of William Faulkner
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, veteran American biographer Carl Rollyson chats with Gabriella about his two-volume biography of William Faulkner, a giant of literature who won the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes for some of the most innovative and enduring literature of the twentieth century. The first volume: The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead is followed by The Life of William Faulkner: This Alarming Paradox. Carl also published William Faulkner Day by Day, which provides a unique insight into the minute of Faulkner’s daily life and relationships.
Read More 
Sarah George. GAMU: The Dreamtime Stories, Life and Feelings of Big Bill Neidjie
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Sarah George chats with Gabriella about the choices she made while writing GAMU: The Dreamtime Stories, Life and Feelings of Big Bill Neidjie. Known as Kakadu Man
Read More 
Ann-Marie Priest: My Tongue Is My Own
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Ann-Marie Priest chats with Gabriella about the choices she made while writing her award-winning biography My Tongue Is My Own, the first biography of Gwen Harwood, one of Australia’s most distinctive poets. My Tongue Is My Own follows Harwood from her childhood in 1920s Brisbane, to her final years in Hobart in the 1990s.
Read More 
Mark McKenna: An Eye for Eternity. The Life of Manning Clark
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the historian Mark McKenna chats with Gabriella about the choices he made while writing An Eye for Eternity. The Life of Manning Clark, the biography of Australia’s legendary historian, Manning Clark.
Read More 
Nancy Hurrell: The Egan Irish Harps
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Nancy Hurrell, an acclaimed harpist and harp historian, chats with Gabriella about her book The Egan Irish Harps: Tradition, Patrons and Players.
Read More 
Brett Mason: Wizards of Oz
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation,Brett Mason chats with Gabriella about the choices he made while writing Wizards of Oz: How Oliphant and Florey helped win the war and shape the modern world.
Read More 
Joel Stephen Birnie: My People’s Songs: How an Indigenous Family Survived Colonial Tasmania
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Joel Stephen Birnie chats with Gabriella about My People’s Songs: How an Indigenous Family Survived Colonial Tasmania, his historical biography of Tarenootairer
Read More 
Nadia Wheatley: The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Nadia Wheatley chats with Gabriella about the choices she made while writing The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift, the biography of Charmian Clift, one of Australia’s most charismatic writers whose books were often decades ahead of their time.
Read More 
Kenneth Miller: Mapping the Darkness. The Visionary Scientists who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep (Part 2)
In this second of two episodes, Kenneth Miller continues his conversation with Gabriella about the choices he made while writing Mapping the Darkness. As we learned in the first episode, a century ago, sleep was widely considered a state of nothingness and a wasteful habit that we could learn to overcome. Thanks to the four scientists Kenneth introduced us to in episode one, we now know the truth: that sleep is an incredibly complex phenomenon, central to our physical, emotional, and cognitive health.
Read More
Kenneth Miller: Mapping the Darkness. The Visionary Scientists who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep (Part 1)
In this first of two episodes, Kenneth Miller chats with Gabriella about the choices he made while writing Mapping the Darkness, The Visionary Scientists who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep, a group biography of four scientists who set out to answer two questions: “Why do we sleep?” and “How we can sleep better?”
Read More 
Matthew Lamb: Frank Moorhouse. Strange Paths
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, biographer Matthew Lamb chats with Gabriella about the choices he made while writing Strange Paths, the biography of Frank Moorhouse, a celebrated Australian novelist, screenwriter and journalist.
Read More 
Bernadette Brennan: A Writing Life. Helen Garner and her Work
In this episode of Biographers in Conversation Gabriella chats with Bernadette Brennan about her book: A Writing Life. Helen Garner and her Work, a literary portrait of one of Australia’s most vital and revered authors.
Read More 
Peter FitzSimons: The Opera House
In this first episode of Biographers in Conversation, Peter FitzSimons chats with Gabriella about the choices he made while writing The Opera House, the gripping biography of Sydney Opera House, one of the world’s most iconic buildings.
Read More