In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Jacqueline Kent chats with Gabriella about the choices she made while writing A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life, the biography of Australia’s doyenne of publishing.

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

• Jacqueline Kent’s inspiration for writing a second edition of A Certain Style after her first edition won the National Biography Award in 2002.
• How Jacqueline structured A Certain Style by bringing together three strands of narrative.
• How Jacqueline retraced Beatrice Davis’s footsteps when so much of the 1940s and 1950s Sydney landscape Davis knew has been replaced by glass towers and automatic teller machines.
• Jacqueline’s views on why biographers must avoid making things up.
• How Jacqueline navigated the rumours about Davis that flew around Sydney’s close- knit publishing circles.
• How Jacqueline reconciled contradictions in Davis’s character and behaviour.

• The literary devices Jacqueline employed to craft witty, captivating narrative.
• The extent to which Jacqueline felt she captured the truth of her subject.

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

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.

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

• Ashleigh Wilson shares his inspiration for writing A Year with Wendy Whiteley: Conversations About Art, Life and Gardening and why he refers to the book as a conversational portrait rather than as a biography.
• Ashleigh explains why he opened the book with a detailed description of Wendy Whiteley’s kitchen table.
• He discloses why he framed each chapter around a particular topic and why he kept returning to the kitchen table as the central anchor.
• Ashleigh reveals how knowing Wendy Whiteley influenced how he portrayed her and the complexities of writing about a living subject.
• He also outlines the novelistic devices he employed to evoke an authentic portrayal of Australia’s art world in the 1960s and 70s, and the extent to which he interpreted Wendy’s character and behaviour versus providing facts and clues and leaving it to readers to form their own interpretations.

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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.

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

• Christie Lowrance shares her inspiration for writing Nature’s Ambassador.
• Christie also reveals why she lives in the house in which Thornton Burgess was born.
• Christie explains her research strategy, which includes a trove of primary source material, with extensive quotations from Thorton’s correspondence and interviews with a multiplicity of people.
• Christie described how she narrowed the biographical scope to prevent writing a tome, given Thorton’s extensive archives.
• Christie discloses her strategy for balancing Thorton’s professional, personal and inner lives.

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