In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, pychotherapist, university lecturer and author Josie McSkimming, chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Gutsy Girls: Love, Poetry and Sisterhood.

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

• Why Gutsy Girls began as a 180,000-word biography of the poet Dorothy Porter, though later transformed into a hybrid of memoir, biography and family history.
• Why Gutsy Girls is a pioneering work placing sibling relationships at the centre of the narrative.
• Why Josie waited until both her parents had died before publishing.
• Why Josie shaped the 19 chapters of Gutsy Girls to mirror Dorothy Porter’s published and unpublished works chronologically, from her childhood creation ‘My Pocket Book of Prayer’ (spelled P-O-K-E-T), through to her acclaimed verse novels, including The Monkey’s Mask.
• Why Josie chose the title Gutsy Girls.
• How Josie found her own authentic voice beyond religious constraints, while honouring the strength of all three sisters who had to forge paths beyond childhood trauma and family expectations.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, biographer and veteran journalist, Helen Trinca, chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Looking for Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Harrower.

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

• Helen Trinca’s quest was to discover why the author Elizabeth Harrower stopped writing at the height of her powers.
• How Elizabeth was rediscovered when Text Publishing republished her novels in 2012, bringing her far greater fame in her 80s than during her original writing career.​
• How Harrower’s traumatic childhood profoundly shaped her novels.
• Elizabeth’s novels explore power dynamics, psychological abuse and relationships with spare, modern prose that resonates with contemporary readers.​
• Elizabeth’s crafted spare, psychologically astute observations about how power operates within relationships, from the tiniest gestures to systematic control. These themes speak directly to contemporary concerns about authoritarianism both in personal relationships and in wider society.
• Why Trinca chose a conventional chronological structure, gradually revealing connections between Harrower's life and her intensely autobiographical novels.
• How Harrower’s legacy lies in her relentless search for life’s deeper meaning.

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Drusilla Modjeska chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about A Woman’s Eye, Her Art: Reframing the Narrative through Art and Life.

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

• Why Drusilla Modjeska wrote this biography of six female European modernist artists from the early 20th century.
• Why the biography also includes contemporary artists, Chantal Joffe and Julie Rapp.
• The meaning of ‘a woman’s eye’.
• Why Drusilla chose to write a collective rather than an individual biography.
• Why Drusilla examined how these women reframed the male gaze through their art.
• Why Drusilla chose a non-linear structure and collage form in three parts.