A Second Chance

Elizabeth Harrower is not a household name in Australian writing, so how has she ended up with not one but two biographies, both published within a month of each other? By sheer coincidence, journalist Helen Trinca and literary editor Susan Wyndham both found themselves on the Harrower trail, work…

My Sexy Sister

Australian poet Dorothy Porter blazed across the literary scene like a meteor. She was even more seductive in real life than on the page and broke many women’s hearts in her short but busy amorous life. Now her adoring younger sister, Josie McSkimming has written Gutsy Girls, a revealing memoir bio…

Big Fish

Although there are several biographies of big game fishing bestselling American author Zane Grey, none of them focus on his two visits to Australia.   Author Vicki Hastrich is also a fishing enthusiast, so when she came across Zane Grey by accident, her interest was piqued. How had this handsome …

Fearless

Fearless Beatrice Faust is an overdue biography of a significant reformist force in the women’s liberation movement of the 60s and 70s in Australia.   Written by political scholar Dr Judith Brett, this lively biography returns Bea to the prominence she once enjoyed as a controversial media figure…

French Wave

American film critic Carrie Rickey has written the first biography of celebrated French cinema pioneer, Agnes Varda.   Varda was born in Belgium but found her creative community in the southern French port town of Sete, which cemented her love for the beach and for many other things that would re…

Samurai Soldier Spy

The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli is a fascinating biographical investigation into the life of Harry Freame - a half Australian, half Japanese military Scout who defied the odds at the front in some of the most vicious fighting of World War One. Some believe he deserved the VC for his bravery but was …

Austen-tation

To mark the sesquicentenary of Jane Austen’s birth, this episode is an edited version of an event for Sydney Writers Festival.   Speakers are scholar of English literature Professor William Christie, bestselling author Jane Caro and First Nations author Larissa Behrendt.   Each of them celebrat…

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

In 2024 a story appeared in the Toronto Star by Deborah Dundas that set the world of biography on fire. At the centre of it was Alice Munro’s biographer Robert Thacker, who has devoted thirty years of his life as an academic to a close archival study of Alice Munro’s work.   It was revealed that …

The Fictional Biographer

Dominic Amerena is a rising young Australian writer who has chosen a biographer as the central figure in his novel I Want Everything. His ambitious, unnamed narrator recognises an older woman at the city baths one day as Brenda Shales, a writer who was famous for two incendiary novels before disap…

Best Biographies

In a first for Life Sentences, host Caroline Baum welcomes a panel of four Australian biographers to discuss the biographies they have read and enjoyed recently. -Ryan Butta chooses Anthony Sharwood’s hybrid travelogue biography of Polish freedom fighter Tadeusz Kosciusko and also mentions Didion …