Biographers in Conversation

Nathan Hobby shares his choices while crafting The Red Witch; A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard. Here’s what you’ll discover:

• Katharine Susannah Prichard’s significance as a trailblazing Australian novelist and political figure who co-founded the Australian Communist Party
• How Pritchard’s ground-breaking novels reflected her social ideals
• Nathan’s extensive researc...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, multi-award-winning biographer Megan Marshall chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• Why a renowned biographer turned the lens on herself, blending memoir wit...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, multi-award-winning journalist and author Kate Legge chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Kindred: A Cradle Mountain Love Story.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• The remarkable true love story of Gustav Weindorfer (an Austrian immigrant) and Kate Cowle (...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, eminent sociologist and author Dr Nikos Papastergiadis chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting John Berger and Me.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• How Nikos’s habit of writing from memory each morning during COVID lockdowns helped shape John Berger and Me.  
• The power of memory in storytelling and how writing purely from recollection une...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, 2025 National Biography Award winner Abbas El-Zein chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting Bullet, Paper, Rock.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• Why Abbas shared his story in a series of short snapshots instead of one continuous timeline. This unconventional structure mirrors the way our memories surface, in vivid, fragmented moments.
• H...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, historian and author Dr Yves Rees chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about the choices they made while crafting Travelling to Tomorrow: The Modern Women Who Sparked Australia’s Romance with America.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• How a group of 10 pioneering women in the early 20th century dared to dream and defy convention by venturing into uncharted territories,...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Anna Beer, the author of five acclaimed biographies and a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College in Oxford, chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Eve Bites Back: An Alternative History of English Literature. Eve Bites Back includes biographical sketches and reappraisals of eight talented female authors who lived, wrote and published between the 14th and ...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the acclaimed historians Dr Henry Reynolds and Dr Nicholas Clements chat with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about their choices while crafting Tongerlongeter: First Nations Leader and Tasmanian War Hero, the biography of the courageous Indigenous warrior, Tongerlongeter.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• Tongerlongeter’s story, like many Indigenous Australian narratives, h...

Patricia Meisol explores the life and legacy of Dr Helen Taussig, the pioneering mother of paediatric cardiology:

• How Helen Taussig exposed the dangers of thalidomide, helping to spark new U.S. drug safety legislation in the 1960s.
• Helen Taussig’s determination in overcoming personal challenges, including dyslexia and progressive hearing los...

Award-winning biographer Jacqueline Kent returns to the podcast to discuss her latest work, coauthored with historian Tom Roberts, about the iconic transgender model and activist April Ashley.

A Life Reimagined – Born George Jamieson in Liverpool, April Ashley transitioned in 1960 and became one of the first Britons to undergo gender-affirming surgery. Jacqueline explores Ap...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the intellectual historian Dr Robert Zaretsky chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas. Known as the ‘patron saint of all outsiders’, Simone Weil was one of the 20th century’s most remarkable thinkers, a philosopher who truly lived by her political and ethical ideals.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this epis...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the historian Dr Kiera Lindsey chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Wild Love: The Ambitions of Adelaide Ironside, the First Australian Artist to Astonish the World. 

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• Adelaide Eliza Scott Ironside was a trailblazing Australian artist known for her passion, ambition and extraordinary talent. Born in Sydn...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the critically acclaimed author, Oxford scholar, literature teacher and performer Dr Sally Bayley chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place. 

Part memoir, part fiction, The Green Lady is an experimental mix of biography, fiction and family history.  

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• The Green Lady explores a child’s search ...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, memoirist Lamisse Hamouda chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting The Shape of Dust. Lamisse co-authored this deeply disturbing account with her father Hazem Hamouda. It chronicles Hazem’s wrongful arrest in Egypt and Lamisse’s desperate 443-day struggle to free him from Tora, one of Egypt’s most notorious prisons. The Shape of Dust won the 2024 National ...

The name Miles Franklin might sound familiar to you. After all, she wrote My Brilliant Career, a debut novel that made her an overnight literary sensation at the age of 21. However, here’s the plot twist: just two years after that success, Miles Franklin vanished from the public eye. Where did she go? And what did she do during those ‘lost’ years?

That’s the mystery we’re here to unravel in this episode of Biographers in Conversati...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the distinguished British biographer Oliver Soden chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat. Jeoffry was a real cat who lived in a London asylum with Christopher Smart, an 18th-century poet.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• How Virginia Woolf’s Flush: A Biography, the imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browni...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the award-winning historian and author Dr Kate Fullagar chats with Dr Gabriella-Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Bennelong & Phillip: A History Unravelled, the first joint biography of First Nations leader, Bennelong, and the first governor of the British Colony of New South Wales, Arthur Phillip.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• Why Bennelong & P...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the historian Dr Pamela Toler chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting The Dragon from Chicago. The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany, the biography of Sigrid Schultz, the Chicago Tribune’s bureau chief in Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• Why Pamela Toler chose The Dragon from Chic...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Ashleigh Wilson chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies me about his choices while crafting Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing, his acclaimed biography of Brett Whiteley, one of Australia’s most iconic artists.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• The meaning of The Other Thing in the biography’s title
• Ashleigh’s surprise discoveries and how they shaped the narr...