Biographers in Conversation

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Anna Thomasson chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about A Vast Horizon: Artists and Lovers, Freedom and War. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Why Anna Thomasson chose a collective biography to reveal the chemistry and interconnected lives of nine surrealists. How a 1937 summer at the Hôtel Vaste Horizon became the book’s narrativ...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Tim Dobbyn chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Black, White + Colour: A Biography of Mervyn Bishop Australia's First Indigenous Professional Photographer Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:  Mervyn Bishop joined the Sydney Morning Herald at 17, becoming Australia’s first Indigenous press photographer and, soon after, the first...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Joshua Kendall chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Trudeau & Doonesbury: The Cartoonist Who Turned the News into Art Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Why Joshua Kendall conceived of Trudeau & Doonesbury as a dual biography of the reclusive cartoonist Garry Trudeau and Doonesbury, his famous comic strip.  How Trudeau...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr James Bailey chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark.  Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Why James structures Spark’s life as nine partial portraits rather than a unified chronological narrative. How Muriel Spark’s changing appearance during sittings for Sandy Moffat’s po...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Nigel Cameron chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Dr Koop: The Many Lives of the Surgeon General. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Why Nigel Cameron opened the narrative with a preface portraying the octogenarian Dr C. Everett Koop.  Nigel chose the title, The Many Lives of the Surgeon General, to reflect Koop’s multidimensional...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Kathryn Heyman chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Circle of Wonders. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: ‘Circle of Wonders’ is a novel about a group of women who gather in the Blue Mountains to support their friend Ronnie Bloom through the final month of her life. ‘Circle of Wonders’ began as a memoir shortly after Kathryn...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Jeffrey Meyers chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Parallel Lives: From Freud and Mann to Arbus and Plath  Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Jeffrey Meyers adopted Plutarch’s parallel lives approach in Parallel Lives, pairing famous figures to uncover common threads of creativity, ambition and struggle across different fields. Jeffr...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Adam Plunkett chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Why Adam Plunkett spent a decade researching Frost’s life, including accessing previously overlooked audio archives of 500 tapes of Frost’s readings and interviews. Love and Need blends biography and...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Ramie Targoff chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Shakespeare’s Sisters: Four Women Who Wrote the Renaissance. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Ramie Targoff selected four female contemporaries of Shakespeare who were publicly recognised writers to challenge Virginia Woolf’s claim that ‘Judith Shakespeare could not exist’. Why R...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Robert Dessaix chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Chameleon: A Memoir of Art, Travel, Ideas and Love. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Chameleon was shortlisted for the 2026 National Biography Award, with judges calling it ‘vintage Dessaix’ and praising its ‘dazzling display of erudition’. Chameleon takes its title from the...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, S. Shakthidharan (Shakthi) chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath centres on the family home Shakthi’s grandmother dismantled piece by piece in Sri Lanka and rebuilt in Western Sydney as a...

In this special episode of Biographers in Conversation for the National Biography Award, Dr Micaela Sahhar chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting the award-winning Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Micaela Sahhar won the 2026 Michael Crouch Award for a Debut Work for Find Me at the Jaffa...

In this special episode of Biographers in Conversation for the 2026 National Biography Award, Dr Helen Ennis chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting  Max Dupain: A Portrait . Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Helen Ennis received the prestigious 2026 National Biography Award for  Max Dupain: A Portrait , the biography of Max Dupain, the most influential pho...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Sophia Lambton chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Why the narrative opened with a prologue about Maria Callas’s artistry. How exhaustive research revealed Callas’s brilliance and flaws. How a detailed calendar of events, letters and performances tracked C...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Erin Vincent chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Fourteen Ways of Looking. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: In Fourteen Ways of Looking, Erin Vincent revisits the tragic year when both her parents were killed in a motor vehicle accident. She was 14. Erin began noticing the number 14 recurring in bo...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Martin Thomas chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Clever Men: How Worlds Collided on the Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land of 1948. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:  Martin Thomas’s research began in the ABC’s sound archive, where he stumbled upon recordings made during the 1948 American Australian Scientific Expeditio...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Judith Mackrell, one of Britain’s most eminent biographers, chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:  Artists, Siblings, Visionaries is the first major dual biography of Gwen and Augustus John, si...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Sylvia Martin chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Double Act: Eirene Mort and Nora Kate Weston. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:  While Eirene Mort was a designer, black & white illustrator, watercolourist, etcher, tapestry worker and potter, Nora Kate Weston, whom Eirene named ‘Chips’, was a carpenter, woodcarver and...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Cynthia Banham chats with Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Mother Shadow: A Meditation on Maternal Inheritance. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:  A hybrid of biographical reimagining, lyrical memoir and transnational family history, Mother Shadow is poetic, with whimsical detours and meditative qualities. The discovery of a torn 1898 b...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Sheryle Bagwell chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Letter from Provence: Two Women, Two Centuries and a Village House in France. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Sheryle Bagwell explains how the chance discovery of a dust-covered volume of Madame de Sévigné’s letters in her Provençal attic became the catalyst for a story sh...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Nigel Hamilton chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Lincoln vs. Davis: The War of the Presidents. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Lincoln vs. Davis is the first dual biography to examine how Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis fought each other as presidents and commanders-in-chief of their respective forces, the Union and the C...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Zachary Leader chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Ellmann’s Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:  Richard Ellmann’s biography of the novelist James Joyce is considered the greatest literary biography of the 20th century. Why Zachary Leader was inspired to craft Ellmann’s Joyce. W...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Micaela Sahhar chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: The death of Micaela Sahhar’s grandmother’s last surviving sister created a sense of urgency for Micaela to capture her Palestinian family’s st...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Professor Karen Fang chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Background Artist: The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: Karen Fang explains why only a full-length biography could do justice to Tyrus Wong’s 106-year life that encompassed his achievements across fine art, animat...

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, award-winning author Dr Debra Adelaide chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting When I Am Sixty-Four. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:  When I Am Sixty-Four is a tender, poignant story based on Debra Adelaide’s lifelong friendship with the award-winning author, Gabrielle Carey. When I Am Sixty-Four bega...