Biographers in Conversation

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the multi-award-winning broadcaster, composer and author Andrew Ford chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting, The Shortest History of Music. A lively, authoritative tour through 4,000 years of music, this book explores music’s role in human society.   Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Andrew Ford explains how he balanced brevity and intellectual depth while crafting a 200-page book spanning 4,000 years of musical history How he synthesised a multiplicity of musical traditions and cultures into a seamless narrative How he balanced historical accuracy with masterful storytelling Why he examined music from multiple angles: Its fundamental impulses; the impact of notation; music as a profession and commodity; the concept of modernism and the revolutionary effects of recording technology How he skilfully weaved history, culture and personal insight into a tapestry that celebrates music in all its forms.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Kate Kennedy, a distinguished cellist, musicologist, and Director of Oxford University’s Centre for Life Writing chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound.   Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Kate Kennedy’s inspiration for crafting Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound Why Kate chose Pál Hermann, Lise Cristiani, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Amedeo Baldovino as her biographical subjects Why Kate criss-crossed Europe by train with her cello strapped to her back to retrace the footsteps of the four extraordinary cellists Why Kate wrote Cello as an experimental mix of memoir and object, collective and quest biography Why Kate included fascinating interludes, sharing her personal experiences, musings, historical research and a cello’s physical and metaphysical characteristics Why Kate introduced various voices into the interludes, including cello makers and dealers, a physicist whose garden houses a cello-turned-bee hive, and cellists such as Steven Isserlis and Christian Poltera The literary devices Kate employed to craft poetic, evocative and at times, electrifying narrative How Kate rediscovered her voice and identity as a cellist by crafting Cello.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, award-winning biographer Dr Bernadette Brennan chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Leaping into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears, a literary biography that explores the rich, tumultuous life of Gillian Mears, one of Australia’s most celebrated writers.   Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:  Gillian Mears’s lived and imaginative lives were rich with adventure, risk and often transgressive passion. Her sensuality and sexuality were the driving forces of her life and writing, and her personal and fictional worlds coalesce Why Bernadette Brennan chose the title, Leaping into Waterfalls Why she explored the meaning of the metaphors in Gillian’s writing, suggesting what they reveal about Gillian’s character How Bernadette took control of the narrative despite Gillian’s valiant attempts to curate her image through her annotated archives of 123 boxes of letters, diaries’ manuscripts and other traces of her life How Bernadette retraced Gillian’s footsteps to create an authentic sense of place How Bernadette balanced Gillian’s life story with literary criticism of her oeuvre How Bernadette kept the focus on Gillian while also portraying the historical, social and cultural context of her times, which included prominent authors such as Helen Garner, Tim Winton and Kate Grenville Ethical decisions about what evidence to include, emphasise and suppress given that Gillian’s sensuality and sexuality were at the core of her identity and informed her writing.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the acclaimed author and art historian Dr Helen Ennis chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Max Dupain: A Portrait, the first biography of the photographer Max Dupain, Australia’s most influential photographer of the 20th century.     Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:   Helen Ennis’s inspiration for crafting Max Dupain: A Portrait   How Max Dupain’s photograph ‘The floater’ influenced Helen’s narrative strategy and the biography’s tone   How Dupain’s character drove the plot   How the women in Dupain’s life and work were instrumental to his success   How Helen achieved a fine balance between Dupain’s professional and public life and his human story   How she reconciled Dupain’s contradictions and complexity to craft a biography characterised by intense psychological closeness   How she ensured her voice as the narrator didn’t overshadow Dupain’s voice and artistic vision   The extent to which Helen interpreted Dupain’s character and behaviour versus providing clues and leaving it up to readers to draw their own   conclusions.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies chats with multi-award-winning author Anna Funder about her choices while crafting Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life. Wifedom resurrects Eileen O’Shaughnessy, a brilliant Oxford graduate who married George Orwell in 1936.       Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:    Anna Funder’s inspiration for writing Wifedom   Why and how Eileen O’Shaughnessy was written out of George Orwell’s life story   How Anna restored Eileen’s voice and visibility   How Anna challenged the traditional biographical form by blending memoir, biography, literary criticism and feminist polemic   The literary devices Anna employed to craft compelling and at times, gripping, narrative   How Anna retraced Eileen’s footsteps through World War Two London and the trenches of the Spanish Civil War   How Anna revealed the systemic biases that have historically silenced women’s contributions, especially those of a wife or female partner   Why Wifedom stands as a testament to the importance of re-examining history through a more inclusive lens, ensuring voices like Eileen’s are heard and remembered.  

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, 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.  Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:  Why Matthew chose to write Frank Moorhouse’s biography in two volumes. Why Matthew refers to Strange Paths as a cultural biography. The meaning of the book’s title, Strange Paths. How Matthew distinguished between the legends, myths and facts of Moorhouse’s life.  How Matthew navigated the complexities of writing about someone he knew and who was alive during most of the project. Matthew’s research strategy and how he narrowed the biographical scope given the tidal wave of primary research material he accessed. How Matthew portrayed the historical, political and social context of the times and how he believes they influenced Moorhouse and his writing.  The ethical choices Matthew faced about revealing secrets. How Matthew navigated the complexities of portraying sensitive information. https://biographersinconversation.com Facebook: Share Your Life Story Linkedin: Gabriella Kelly Davies Instagram: Biographersinconversation

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Gabriella chats with Bernadette Brennan about her choices while crafting A Writing Life. Helen Garner and her Work, a literary portrait of one of Australia’s most vital and revered authors.  Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Why Bernadette Brennan felt compelled to write A Writing Life.  Why Bernadette chose to craft A Writing Life as a literary portrait of Helen Garner rather than as a conventional biography. Why Bernadette opened A Writing Life with a scene in which an agitated Garner is a panelist at a writers’ conference. How Bernadette disentangled Garner’s human story from her writing given that Garner’s life and writing inform and shape each other.  Why Bernadette views A Writing Life as genre-bending. Why Bernadette structured the portrait around literary analysis of each of Garner’s books, and why she thinks of the chapters in A Writing Life as rooms in ‘Garner’s house of writing’.  Why Bernadette ended A Writing Life with an email from Garner about her Bible reading group and her remark: ‘Our immersion in a (mighty) text brings everyone to his (or her) best self’.  https://biographersinconversation.com Facebook: Share Your Life Story Linkedin: Gabriella Kelly Davies Instagram: Biographersinconversation  

Welcome to Biographers in Conversation, a podcast about the many choices biographers make while researching, writing, and publishing life stories. If you like the sound of Biographers in Conversation, please subscribe, share the podcast with your family and friends, and leave a review. Stay tuned for the launch of Biographers in Conversation on the 3 April 2024. https://biographersinconversation.com 

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dava Sobel chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Dava Sobel used the periodic table as the structural framework, with each chapter keyed to an element that represents a period of Curie’s life or scientific work. Dava selected the title The Elements of Marie Curie to emphasise how the chemical elements shaped her discoveries and personal life. Dava wrote in the first person as Marie Curie, translating her letters into English though preserving her voice and perspective to create an immersive narrative. Dava traced the path for women in science by highlighting generations of women mentored by Curie, showing her enduring influence beyond her own research. Dava created a chemical chronology that parallels scientific discoveries with biography, such as linking radium extraction to gruelling lab work. Dava ended with ‘Carbon’ to reflect on Curie’s legacy and the organic, interconnected nature of her scientific and humanitarian impact.

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, Mark Hussey chats with Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel was published exactly 100 years after Virginia Woolf’s famous novel appeared. Why Mark Hussey portrayed Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway as a living subject with its own life story. Why Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel is considered as an object biography. Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel follows Woolf’s story chronologically from its first creative stirrings in her diary through conception, writing, drafting, revision, publication, early reviews, and onward throughout its extraordinary afterlife, which continues today. How Woolf’s earliest notes from 6 October 1922 reveal she knew from the outset that ‘all must converge upon the party at the end’. How Mrs Dalloway inspired creative works such as novels set on a single day, films, an opera, plays, cartoons, memes, tattoos and songs.

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, Francesca Wade chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife was sparked by Francesca’s access to previously unpublished Leon Katz interview transcripts with Alice B. Toklas, revealing how Gertrude Stein deliberately constructed her public persona and how Toklas spent 20 years stewarding Stein’s posthumous legacy as instructed by Stein’s will. Francesca challenges the conventional biographical form by structuring the narrative in two parts: first telling Stein’s life story as she presented it, then interrogating and deepening that account through posthumous archival discoveries, dramatising how biographical knowledge is constructed rather than simply discovered. Francesca deliberately exposes the archival ‘workings’ behind biography, showing how Yale archivist Donald Gallup’s negotiations with Toklas over burning love letters and sealing documents shaped what future generations could know about Stein’s life and her relationships. The central enigma Francesca explores is Stein’s binary reputation: celebrated as either a radical modernist writer or merely a personality symbolising 1920s Paris bohemia. This tension frustrated Stein in her lifetime and continues to complicate her literary legacy. Francesca concludes that biography is fundamentally an artificial and odd enterprise of converting life’s messiness into linear narrative, with every sentence representing a decision shaped by the biographer’s attitudes and biases. This makes biographical practice itself worthy of interrogation and experimentation

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, Frances Wilson chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: How Muriel Spark’s first 39 turbulent years provided the raw material for her fiction. Frances Wilson’s discovery of Spark’s games, puzzles and anagrams, including the invented ‘doppelganger’, Nita McEwen, whose name conceals the chilling phrase, Twin Menace. Wilson structured Electric Spark around Spark’s ‘four Marys’ and the Scottish ballad tradition, tracing how Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Shelley, Mary Stranger and Marie Stopes shaped Spark’s imagination. The spooky permeability between life and art: Spark’s belief she lived in the future tense, her ‘evil eye’ and the uncanny way events in her novels repeatedly echoed in her own life. How during her four-month sprint writing Electric Spark, Wilson could feel Spark’s hand on her own, mirroring Spark’s own accounts of tuning into ‘voices in the air’. The ethical and imaginative challenges of writing biography about an inveterate trickster: reading between the lines of Curriculum Vitae and Loitering with Intent, embracing contradiction, and accepting that any life of Spark can only ever offer one powerful version of the truth, if at all.

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, Susan Wyndham chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Elizabeth Harrower: The Woman in the Watch Tower.  Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Why Susan Wyndham opened the biography with Elizabeth Harrower’s late-life renaissance. The meaning of the title: ‘The Woman in the Watchtower.’ Details of Susan’s exhaustive archival research.  How studying Trove, divorce papers and criminal records enabled Susan to fill gaps in the historical record.​ How cross-referencing Harrower’s letters to multiple recipients revealed how she presented different versions of herself to various people.​ How Susan Wyndham wove literary criticism throughout the narrative. Why Susan is mostly invisible in the narrative.

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 episode of Biographers in Conversation’s special summer season, multi-award-winning broadcaster, composer and author Andrew Ford AOM chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his latest book, The Shortest History of Music. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Andrew Ford explains how he balanced brevity and intellectual depth while crafting a 200-page book spanning 4,000 years of musical history How he synthesised a multiplicity of musical traditions and cultures into a seamless narrative How he balanced historical accuracy with masterful storytelling Why he examined music from multiple angles: Its fundamental impulses; the impact of notation; music as a profession and commodity; the concept of modernism and the revolutionary effects of recording technology How he skilfully weaved history, culture and personal insight into a tapestry that celebrates music in all its forms.

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.