Biographers in Conversation

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Hester Kaplan chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Twice Born: Finding My Father In the Margins of Biography. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: The catalyst for crafting Twice Born was the death of Hester’s father, the biographer Justin Kaplan. Hester realised she had lost the chance to ask her father the questions that had always eluded her during his lifetime. Rather than being a conventional biography, Twice Born blends biography, memoir, and fiction, a structure Kaplan chose deliberately to view her father from many different angles and points of view, enabling her to know him in ways impossible while he was alive. Kaplan discovered that her father chose Mark Twain as his biographical subject because of deep personal parallels that included an early loss of parents, a traumatic childhood and an identity reinvented through writing. Hester insists that biographers inevitably choose subjects who mirror their own inner lives. Kaplan reflects on how memory and fiction blur once put on the page. Because Justin Kaplan always wrote behind closed study doors, his daughter uses fiction to imaginatively enter that space and reconstruct his writing process.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Paul Kildea chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Chopin’s Piano: A Journey through Romanticism. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Paul Kildea’s inspiration for crafting Chopin’s Piano. A Journey through Romanticism. The significance of the biography’s title. The relevance of Chopin’s Piano: A Journey through Romanticism today. Chopin’s primitive piano was crafted by Juan Bouwer, an amateur artisan in Palma, Majorca, in 1838. Juan Bouwer had no inkling his humble instrument would become the catalyst for Chopin composing six of his 24 Preludes on the piano. Why Chopin’s Piano’s 24-chapter structure mirrors Chopin’s two books of 12 Preludes. Musica Viva adapted Chopin’s Piano as a national touring production in 2023, blending all 24 Preludes with storytelling.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Theodore Ell chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Lebanon Days: Memories of an ancient land through economic meltdown, a revolution of hope and surviving the 2020 Beirut explosion. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Theodore Ell reveals how the blended style of Lebanon Days—weaving memoir, cultural history, travel writing, journalism and political analysis—was an organic response to the multi-layered forces he witnessed in Lebanon between 2018 and 2021. Theo explores the five-part chronological structure of Lebanon Days and the key pivot points that shaped it: arriving as a newcomer, the 2019 revolution, COVID lockdown, the 2020 port explosion, and a sombre farewell. Theo explains the counterintuitive decision to draft Lebanon Days backwards, beginning with the explosion and working towards his arrival, as an archaeological method for keeping Lebanon, rather than himself, at the centre of the narrative. Theo introduces his forthcoming authorised biography of the acclaimed poet Les Murray, This Country Is My Mind. It involves studying 65 boxes of archival material he is studying at the National Library of Australia and interviews with over 50 people.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Lucy Jane Sussex and Megan Brown chat with Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Outrageous Fortunes: The Adventures of Mary Fortune, Crime-Writer, and Her Criminal Son George Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Outrageous Fortunes was co-authored after a 25-year conversation, combining Lucy’s 35 years of research with Megan’s PhD research. Lucy and Megan employed a revisionist approach to correct the record about Mary Fortune, arguing that women’s voices are undervalued. Why Mary Fortune’s and George Fortune’s stories were blended as ‘one story’. How Lucy and Megan employed ‘sideways research’ when direct evidence was missing. How Lucy and Megan resisted dramatisation and fictionalisation, instead relying on contemporary newspaper accounts and court records. How Lucy and Megan borrowed the title Outrageous Fortunes from Shakespeare to reflect scandalous lives and the Victorian ‘topsy-turvy’ puzzle metaphor that shaped their narrative structure

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Jacqueline Kent chats with Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Inconvenient Women: Australian Radical Writers 1900-1970. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Jacqueline Kent traces the ‘missing generation’ of Australian radical women writers, who bridged the gap between suffragists and second-wave feminism. These writers were politically active and formally transgressive, challenging norms in both their activism and subject matter. The collective-biography form enables Kent to show how these women intersected through organisations like the Fellowship of Australian Writers, the Society of Women Writers and the Commonwealth Literary Fund, creating fragile but vital support networks in otherwise isolated domestic lives. Kent insists these ‘inconvenient women’ speak directly to the present, reminding listeners that structural sexism, economic inequality and workplace predation persist, even as a new generation of women refuses to accept discrimination as the norm.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Nicholas Boggs chats with Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Baldwin: A Love Story. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Why Nicholas Boggs structured the biography around Baldwin’s four great loves rather than chronology. Baldwin’s frank acknowledgment that his novels were driven by autobiographical impulses gave Boggs rare biographical licence to connect fiction to life without making reductive one-to-one correlations between characters and real people.​ Retracing Baldwin’s footsteps to Corsica, Istanbul and the south of France proved essential for capturing sensory details like the smell of maquis plants that connected biographer to subject across time. Boggs challenged the prevailing image of Baldwin as either a civil rights icon or a tragic figure, instead revealing he died at 63 surrounded by his great loves. The biography’s epilogue deliberately intervenes in Baldwin’s posthumous reputation, joining a chorus of scholars and writers working to dismantle the narrative of creative decline that attached itself to Baldwin’s later years, reorienting readers toward the enduring power of his voice and vision.​

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation Lance Richardson chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Lance Richardson approached the biography with a central thesis question: how did Matthiessen develop his unique sensibility that allowed him to move fluidly between science and spirituality, treating them as complementary rather than mutually incompatible worldviews? The biography’s unauthorised status liberated Richardson to tell the unvarnished truth without contractual obligations to polish Matthiessen’s legacy. Richardson’s methodology prioritised archival evidence over potentially fallible memories, deliberately presenting conflicting accounts from sources rather than reconciling them artificially, which he considers fiction and a biographical pitfall. How retracing Matthiessen’s trek to Nepal’s Crystal Monastery enabled Richardson to viscerally understand the elemental spaces where Matthiessen shed ego and responsibilities to access his most authentic self. Richardson deliberately avoided portraying Matthiessen as a unified self, instead showing how his fractured personas were all manifestations of the same restless search for meaning and true nature. The biography’s ethical framework prioritised truth-telling about Matthiessen’s serial infidelities and neglect while giving substantial narrative space to Maria Matthiessen and other women to speak in their own words, resisting the biographical tradition of relegating wives to background roles. The epilogue’s focus on Matthiessen’s Zen teachings about death and essential mind provided closure for a biography about a fundamentally unresolved life.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation’s special summer season, Dr Stephen J. Campbell chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Why Stephen Campbell resists the urge to create a seamless narrative and instead embraces the mystery, silence and gaps in Leonardo da Vinci’s story. How the book’s structure reflects the fragmented reality of Leonardo’s life. The origin of the book’s title and how it challenges traditional biographical expectations by leaning into ambiguity. How Campbell uses philosophical chapter titles and historical nuance to explore mythmaking and modern interpretations of Leonardo da Vinci. Why Campbell avoids speculation and instead invites readers to sit with what we don’t know, treating uncertainty as revealing rather than inconvenient. The biographer’s role as a curator of questions rather than authority, a model of life writing that prioritises transparency over certainty. The myths the book gently dismantles, from the lonely genius trope to misconceptions about Leonardo’s inventions and personality. How An Untraceable Life encourages us to rethink what biography can be and to rediscover awe in the unresolvable aspects of a life.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Professor Clare Wright OAM chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Näku Dhäruk The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Clare Wright’s deep 15-year cultural integration with the Yolŋu community in North-East Arnhem Land enabled her to write The Bark Petitions collaboratively and authentically from a First Nation’s perspective. The four Bark Petitions were created by Yolŋu Elders in 1963 as a form of diplomacy between two sovereign nations. The Yolŋu Elders were protesting bauxite mining on sacred lands without their consent. The Bark Petitions reframes the petitions as a manifestation of Yolŋu law and territorial rights, revealing a sophisticated legal system governing land, kinship and governance that predates and rivals European colonial systems. Wright positions The Bark Petitions as Australian political history with Indigenous perspectives restored. The Bark Petitions transcends a classic object biography. Instead, it’s a hybrid of cultural storytelling, sacred stories, oral history, narrative history, political activism and a powerful account of sovereignty and resistance. The Bark Petitions employs a kaleidoscopic, non-linear narrative structure. Wright deliberately gives the final voice to a contemporary Yolŋu woman, emphasising that Indigenous people are living storytellers shaping ongoing national conversations and positioning the Bark Petitions as an eternal flame of resistance and knowledge.

In this first episode of Biographers in Conversation’s special summer season, the distinguished British biographer Oliver Soden chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: How Virginia Woolf’s Flush: A Biography, the imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel, influenced Oliver Soden’s choices while crafting The Poet’s Cat How Oliver cleverly used Jeoffry as a lens through which to explore Christopher Smart’s character, personality and often troubled life How Oliver retraced Jeoffry’s and Christopher Smart’s real and imagined footsteps in 18th-century London, discovering its vibrant cast of characters such as King George, the composer Handel and Samuel Johnson, one of the towering figures of British literature How Oliver balanced fact and fiction given his admission that ‘the dividing line between fact and fiction is necessarily wobbly’ in The Poet’s Cat, and ‘sometimes one is disguised as the other’ How Oliver accessed Jeoffry’s interior life and inner monologue, enabling him to write from the perspective of an 18th-century alley cat How Oliver shifted from the traditional, scholarly tone and narrative style of his biographies of the composer Michael Tippett and playwright Noël Coward to the whimsical, witty, affectionate and playful style of The Poet’s Cat How Oliver balanced the lightheartedness of Jeoffry’s antics with the book’s deeper philosophical themes.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, biographer and veteran journalist, Helen Trinca, chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Looking for Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Harrower. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Helen Trinca’s quest was to discover why the author Elizabeth Harrower stopped writing at the height of her powers. How Elizabeth was rediscovered when Text Publishing republished her novels in 2012, bringing her far greater fame in her 80s than during her original writing career.​ How Harrower’s traumatic childhood profoundly shaped her novels. Elizabeth’s novels explore power dynamics, psychological abuse and relationships with spare, modern prose that resonates with contemporary readers.​ Elizabeth’s crafted spare, psychologically astute observations about how power operates within relationships, from the tiniest gestures to systematic control. These themes speak directly to contemporary concerns about authoritarianism both in personal relationships and in wider society. Why Trinca chose a conventional chronological structure, gradually revealing connections between Harrower's life and her intensely autobiographical novels. How Harrower’s legacy lies in her relentless search for life’s deeper meaning.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Julie Summers chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about British Vogue: The Biography of an Icon Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Why Julie Summers decided to craft an object biography of British Vogue. What Julie discovered by reading every issue of British Vogue since its launch in 1916. Why Julie portrayed British Vogue as a living, evolving personality. How Julie brought a century of style, culture and power to life. How British Vogue has reflected and shaped women’s lives for over a century. The story behind the striking cover of British Vogue: The Biography of an Icon How British Vogue became a cultural barometer. British Vogue’s enduring ability to chronicle and shape British style, culture, and imagination.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Greg de Moore chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting Tom Wills: The Insubordinate Life of an Australian Sporting Legend. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: How Greg de Moore first stumbled upon Tom Wills’ forgotten story Why Greg felt compelled to rescue Tom Will’s legendary tale from obscurity. Wills’s remarkable life journey growing up among Aboriginal friends in the bush, captaining cricket at England’s elite Rugby School then returning to Australia to become a cricket star and co-inventor of Australian Rules. Greg’s narrative choices to bring Wills’ world alive. Why Greg framed Wills as ‘insubordinate’. How Greg portrayed Wills’s rebellious streak. How Greg approached writing about Wills’ dramatic downfall. Why sharing Tom Wills’s story still matters.