Biographers in Conversation

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In this episode of Biographers in Conversation Ashleigh Wilson chats with Gabriella about his book: A Year with Wendy Whiteley: Conversations About Art, Life and Gardening.

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• Ashleigh Wilson shares his inspiration for writing A Year with Wendy Whiteley: Conversations About Art, Life and Gardening and why he ref...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Christie Lowrance chats with Gabriella about her strategy for writing Nature’s Ambassador: The Legacy of Thornton W. Burgess, the children’s author and naturalist. Christie’s book is the first complete biography of Thornton W. Burgess, the preeminent 20th century naturalist, wildlife advocate, children’s author and pioneer in environmental education and radio programming. 

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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.

• Laurie Gwen Shapiro shares with us her inspirati...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Gabriella chats with Melanie Nolan about her book, The ADB’s Story, the history of the Australian Dictionary of Biography she co-edited with Christine Fernon. Melanie is the general editor of ADB, which is widely recognised as an Australian cultural institution and national treasure. She is also Director of Australia’s National Centre of Biography.

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In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Melinda Ponder shares with Gabriella her choices while writing the biography of the 19th century American poet, writer, teacher and social activist, Katherine Lee Bates.

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• Why Melinda Ponder chose the title From Sea to Shining Sea
• How Melinda represented the historical and cultura...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Judith Brett, the acclaimed political historian, chats with Gabriella about the choices she made while writing The Enigmatic Mr Deakin. This biography of Alfred Deakin, Australia’s second Prime Minister, won the 2018 National Biography Award. 

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• Judith Brett shares with us why she titled her biography The Eni...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Joshua Kendall chats with Gabriella about the choices he made while writing The Man Who Made Lists, his biography of Peter Mark Roget, the eighteenth-century polymath who created the legendary Roget’s Thesaurus. 

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• Why Joshua felt compelled to write The Man Who Made Lists. 
• The me...

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.

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• Why Ryan Cropp felt compelled to write a biography of D...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Marcia Biederman shares with Gabriella the choices she made while writing The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill, Abortion, Death and Concealment in Victorian New England.

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• Why Marcia Biederman felt compelled to write The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill
• The book’s relevance today, more...

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, her 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. The Shelf Life of Zora Cross was shortlisted in the 2020 NSW Premier’s History Awards and highly commended in the 20...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Gabriella chats with veteran biographer Carl Rollyson about his two-volume biography of William Faulkner, a giant of 20th century literature who won the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes: The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead and The Life of William Faulkner: This Alarming Paradox. Carl also published William Faulkner Day by Day, which provides a unique insight into the minute ...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Gabriella chats with Sarah George, who wrote GAMU: The Dreamtime Stories, Life and Feelings of Big Bill Neidjie. Known as Kakadu Man, Aboriginal elder Big Bill was instrumental in the establishment of the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park and he was deeply committed to preserving his land, culture and mother tongue. 

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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. A Life of Gwen Harwood, the first biography of Gwen Harwood, one of Australia’s most distinctive poets. My Tongue Is My Own follows Gwen from her childhood in 1920s Brisbane, to her final years in Hobart in the 1990s. 

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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 biography of Australia’s legendary historian, Manning Clark.

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• The meaning behind the book’s title: An Eye for Eternity.

• How Mark McKenna navigated Manning Clark’s pa...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Nancy Hurrell, an acclaimed harpist and harp historian, chats with Gabriella about the choices she made while crafting The Egan Irish Harps: Tradition, Patrons and Players. Nancy also plays Carolin’s Concerto on her 1820 Egan Irish Harp.

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• Why Nancy opened the book with a dramatic scene in 1813 involving the d...

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. 

Wizards of Oz is an account of a friendship between two Adelaide men, the physicist Mark Oliphant and medical researcher Howard Florey and how their scientific discoveries profoundly impacted the course of World War II. It is a...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Joel Stephen Birnie chats with Gabriella about the choices he made while crafting My People’s Songs: How an Indigenous Family Survived Colonial Tasmania, his historical biography of his earliest known ancestral grandmother and her two surviving daughters. These three extraordinary matriarchs fought for the Indigenous communities they founded in Tasmania, sparking a tradition of social...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Nadia Wheatley chats with Gabriella about the choices she made while writing the biography of Charmian Clift, one of Australia’s most charismatic writers whose books were often decades ahead of their time.

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

• Nadia Wheatley’s reluctance to write Charmian Clift’s biography and the vigorous arm twisting that ult...

In this episode, Gabriella continues her conversation with Kenneth Miller about his  group biography Mapping the Darkness, The Visionary Scientists who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep.

As we learned in the previous episode, a century ago, sleep was widely considered a state of nothingness and a wasteful habit we could learn to overcome. Thanks to the four scientists Kenneth introduced us to in episode one, we now know the truth: th...