To kick off Season One on 3 April 2024, I’ll chat with Peter FitzSimons about the choices he made while writing an epic biography of Sydney Opera House, one of the world’s most iconic buildings. Peter FitzSimons Here’s Peter talking about a vital aspect of his biography and some of the literary devices he employed […]
My New Podcast “Biographers in Conversation” launches
I’m a biographer endlessly fascinated by the multiplicity of choices biographers make when crafting a life story. When you read a biography, do you feel like you’re in the story living the biographical subject’s life, feeling what they’re feeling and seeing what they’re seeing? To stimulate your imagination this way, biographers make hundreds of decisions about how they research and write their […]
Celebrating 2 years of a mighty journey!
Two years since Breaking through the pain barrier launched It’s National Pain Week and today, we commemorate the second anniversary of the inspiring biography, Breaking Through the Pain Barrier: The Extraordinary Life of Dr Michael J. Cousins, launched by the peak advocacy body, Painaustralia, which Michael Cousins launched in 2010. Dr Michael Cousins is a trailblazer […]
“Wifedom” by Anna Funder: the invisible woman in George Orwell’s life
The invisible woman in biographies of famous men I loved ‘Wifedom’ by Anna Funder. Her painstaking research about Eileen O’Shaughnessy, George Orwell’s first wife, astonished me with the intricate details of Eileen’s life. How did so many male Orwell biographers not find this same evidence? And how did Anna Funder find it when so many […]
Heather Mitchell’s enthralling memoir: “Everything and Nothing”
Heather Mitchell I’m loving the acclaimed actress Heather Mitchell’s memoir, “Everything and Nothing”. It is so eloquent, but also sad, raw and disturbing in places, particularly when she recounts the impacts of deeply held family secrets on her. Also when she recounts recurring episodes of the sexual misconduct and criminal abuse so many women of […]
“The Invisible Woman” by Claire Tomalin
How Invisible was Nelly? I’m re-reading and loving “The Invisible Women” by Claire Tomalin, the biography of Nelly Ternan, Charles Dickens’ secret lover of twelve years. In 1863, Dickens destroyed all letters written to him over his lifetime, but he could not convince people who had received letters from him to eradicate them. After his […]
Celebrating my time in Oxford as a visiting scholar in life writing
Celebrating our last night in Oxford. Every conversation, tutorial, writing workshop and meeting with scholars across biography, life writing, English Literature, medical humanities and the history of medicine sparked ideas that resulted in breakthroughs in my writing. While in Oxford, I decided to launch ‘Writing the Scientist’s Life’, a weekly podcast of interviews with science […]
I’ve felt like a fly on the wall in the pain medicine archives
Today we finished our research at the University of California Pain Medicine archives. It’s been an extraordinary experience. I’ve felt like a fly on the wall watching the early pioneers of pain medicine establish this new field of medicine. Their letters reveal so much about them as deeply committed doctors trying to reduce suffering from […]
My interview with …..
An interview with Sylvia Plath, William Faulkner, Susan Sontag and Marilyn Monroe’s biographer, Carl Rollyson, for his series A life in biography. It is a wide-ranging conversation about science and medical biography and my experiences as a visiting scholar at Oxford University’s Centre for Life Writing. . . . . . . . . . […]
