Biographers in Conversation

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the musician and author Dr Jillian Graham chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Inner Song. A Biography of Margaret Sutherland, the life story of the ‘Grand Old Lady of Classical Music.’

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

• Margeret Sutherland was a child prodigy, composer, pianist and teacher. She composed more than 200 works and was an in...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr David Veltman, Dr Daniel Meister and Professor Hans Renders chat with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Biography Across the Digitized Globe: Essays in Honour of Hans Renders.

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

• David and Daniel edited this collection of essays to honour Hans’s pioneering...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Shauna Bostock chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Reaching Through Time: Finding My Family’s Stories.

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

• The shocking late-night phone Shauna Bostock received that ignited her determination to unearth her family’s true his...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting Paris in Ruins: How Love, War and Art Gave Birth to Impressionism.

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

• How the chaos of war and revolution in 1870s Paris shaped the bi...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, multi-award-winning biographer Dr Heather Clark chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath.

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

• Why Heather Clark intentionally shifts the narrative away from Sylvia Plath’s...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, award-winning political historian and biographer Dr Judith Brett chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Fearless Beatrice Faust: Sex, Feminism and Body Politics.

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

• How Judith Brett discovered Beatrice Faust’s story.
• Why Judit...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Charlotte Jacobs chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting 90 Seconds to Midnight: A Hiroshima Survivor’s Nuclear Odyssey.

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

• Charlotte Jacobs’s inspiration for crafting 90 Seconds to Midnight.
• How Charlotte gained insights i...

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, lawyer and author Sam Elkin chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting Detachable Penis: A Queer Legal Saga.

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

• Sam’s thought process behind structuring the memoir as a chronological legal saga intertwining his gender transition with pivotal moments in Australia’s LGBTQ+ rights movement.
• How he found a warm, con...

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...