Perth based skin and burns surgeon Professor Fiona Wood is one of the most trusted and admired figures in Australian life and yet it took her years to agree to biographer Sue Williams request to let her tell her life story.   Time poor and a workaholic, she eventually relented. Williams also talks to her colleagues and patients and recreates the scenes on the ground following the Bali bombing to paint a rounded but nonetheless admiring picture of a very determined medical pioneer who combines exceptional surgical skills with an excellent bedside manner and a holistic vision of how the body heals.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In George Harrison, The Reluctant Beatle, veteran rock journalist and biographer Philip Norman (author of the definitive Beatles book, Shout!) gives us an access all areas portrait of a paradoxical figure who found fame a burden but emerged from the band, to grow into a new creative phase of life that was rewarding and productive in unexpected ways.   Based on extensive interviews with those who knew Harrison intimately,  this is a biography that is not always flattering to its subject. Harrison presents as a series of contradictions, but there is no doubt that he was eclipsed and under-estimated by Lennon and McCartney in the Beatles. He is, however, credited with writing one of its greatest hits and introducing the band to Eastern music, through his interest in learning to play the sitar, thanks to his deep friendship with Ravi Shankar.   Later he enjoyed global success in his own right, as well as becoming a pioneer of pop philanthropy, producing the landmark concert for Bangladesh and had a second career as a successful independent film producer, financing his friends The Pythons Life of Brian.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the most puzzling and flamboyant women on the streets of Sydney in the twentieth century, Bee Miles became the stuff of legend, a celebrity in her own lifetime, but also a troubled soul who spent time in asylums and in and out of jail. In  Bee Miles, Australia’s famous bohemian rebel, Rose Ellis uncovers a medical diagnosis that sheds new light on what caused Bee’s notorious episodes of misbehaviour in public places.   She also examines the intense and fraught dynamic between Bee and her powerful father, and paints the scene when Sydney was bubbling with new ideas from a heady collision of the rationalist society, rising nationalism and a flourishing underground bohemian scene. Bee was at the centre of everything, but also had nowhere to live.  Just how did this intelligent, infuriating, unpredictable, outspoken woman become famous for being homeless?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Catharine Lumby is the first out of the gate of two biographers to tackle the many-faceted life of author Frank Moorhouse, who was a well known bon vivant, bushwalker and prolific author of fiction and non fiction. He was also an active campaigner on issues including censorship and copyright law.   Lumby’s biography, Frank Moorhouse: A Life, is organised thematically and relies on her longstanding friendship with Moorhouse for its very personal approach as she navigates his archive selectively. In doing so she reflects on the moral dilemmas that face a biographer who is close not only to their subject but respectful of the people in his orbit who may wish to remain anonymous.   The result is an intimate introduction to an intriguing figure in Australian culture, who knew how to make a mean martini.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Every Australian knows My Country, the poem that made Dorothea Mackellar famous at a young age. But very few people know much about her life.   In Her Sunburnt Country: The Extraordinary Literary Life of Dorothea Mackellar, biographer Deborah Fitzgerald was approached by her descendants and given unprecedented access to her papers, including a diary she wrote in code. What secret loves was she hiding and protecting? And why did this privileged, beautiful, intelligent and eligible young woman never marry?   This is the remarkable and until now untold story of an independent free-spirited woman who lived on her own terms, with her closest companion and creative soul mate.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anna Funder has already garnered international praise for her non fiction (Stasiland) and fiction (All That I Am)   In Wifedom, she does something new and bold, creating a hybrid of genres that brings together biography, memoir, fiction and feminist critique in what she calls ‘an intervention’ that examines how George Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy came to be erased from the many biographies of her husband.   Though very much a crucial partner and collaborator in his political activism against the fascists in Spain as well as in his writing, few traces of Eileen are to be found.   Funder, an avowed Orwell admirer, brings O’Shaughnessy out from the shadows and portrays her as a sharp, resourceful and calm partner under pressure, who is also an intellectual match for her husband. Funder questions the silence that has enveloped O’Shaughnessy for too long: is it deliberate, or simply the symptom of general oversight explained by the sexism of the times?   At times furious and at times funny, this is biography at its most creative and thought-provoking, forcing the reader to re-assess the reputation of one of the most admired writers of his time. Wifedom is a game changer.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

William Cooper was a remarkable Yorta Yorta man from Victoria, born in the 1860s who sought justice for his people by petitioning the British King for black representation in parliament. He believed that it was necessary to ‘think black’ to understand and implement justice for Aboriginal people. When he heard about the persecution of the Jews following Kristallnacht, he took a petition to the German consulate in protest. An eloquent and distinguished activist, he is the subject of a scholarly biography by historian Bain Atwood, who examines Cooper’s life and influence in the context of colonialism and the Aboriginal experience of dispossession and the impact of a Christian mission education.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Often acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest singer songwriters,  and compared to Paul McCartney, who is a fan, Neil Finn has had a pretty regular life. He comes from a happy and musical home, which he shared with his older brother Tim.  First in Split Enz and then in his own band, Crowded House, the brothers demonstrated a capacity to make joyful hooky music that became worldwide hits. But there were tensions with Tim and the death of band member Paul Hester’s cast a long shadow.   Rock journalist Jeff Apter has written biographies of Keith Urban, Gwen Stefani, The Bee Gees and Jeff Buckley. He talks about the genre of rock/pop biography, and explains how lyrics can reveal more than any interview.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

She was one of the finest poets Australia has ever produced but Gwen Harwood was also a very mischievous woman, who played literary pranks on editors who failed to publish her work. When marriage takes her to Tasmania, she hates the place. Her husband is an intensely jealous man who is totally uninterested in her work. She embarks on intense friendships with both men and women and passionate love affairs, writes hundreds of letters and poems and eventually finds acclaim and recognition.   After two previous attempts by other writers fail, Ann-Marie Priest rises to the challenge of the first biography of a major literary figure who lived off the radar. Ann-Marie Priest navigates all the twists and turns of Harwood’s life of ducking and weaving and hiding behind false identities to unmask a true original and reveal an unknown love story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nora Ephron had it all: success, love, friendship, a brilliantly original voice, personal style.   As the writer of Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail, she demonstrated an acute ability to write about relationships between men and women that was bestselling and box office gold. Her essay collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck, showcased her talent for being simultaneously frivolous and profound.   First time biographer Kirstin Marguerite Doidge is an Ephron fan who has spoken to many of Nora’s friends, colleagues, and contemporaries to get beneath the groomed surface of her subject.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.