Books And Arts - Separate Stories Podcast

Five days with a retired concrete engineer in Western Australia in 2006, and it's funny.

The Artistic Director of Bangarra Dance Theatre, Stephen Page, on the 2017 production which told the story of Bennelong, an Eora man who became a conduit between his people and the newly arrived settlers at Sydney Cove.

Krissy Kneen on her latest novel, An Uncertain Grace, which is about taboos around younger and older sexual desires and why jellyfish are important.

Scottish crimewriter Chris Brookmyre reveals what has influenced him, and throws in a song based on one of his novels.

Recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey plays for us and talks about the contemporary potential of her ancient instrument.

Tony Jones, the host of the ABC's Q&A program, released his first novel in 2017, which travels between the streets of Sydney, the corridors of Parliament House, and the mountains of Yugoslavia.

Argentine literary star Samanta Schweblin discusses her surreal and unsettling novel Fever Dream.

What works does Michael Robotham reach for on his Top Shelf?

What happens when you bring together choreographer Wayne McGregor, artist Ólafur Eliasson and musician Jamie XX? An innovative dance piece based on a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Award-winning Melbourne author, Chris Womersley, is back with a novel set in 1673 in France during the plague.

Melbourne based actor, director and playwright Peter Houghton joins us with some surprising favourites on his Top Shelf.

We travel to remote communities in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands of South Australia to find out why these tiny art centres are producing such phenomenal contemporary art.

Michael Rosen follows the famous French author in exile in London after he was sentenced to prison for his vocal support of Alfred Dreyfus.

Through stories of their life and family, Ivan Coyote works fearlessly at the edges of gender, queer and identity politics.

British author Claire Fuller discusses the books, films and music that inspired her to become a writer.

The Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibition (which is now on at the Heide Museum of Contemporary Art in Melbourne) Jenny Watson: the Fabric of Fantasy covers four decades of the artist's work, including work on unconventional fabrics and featuring self-portraits, alter-egos, horses and rockstars.

Across four generations and almost a century, Pachinko tells the story of a Korean family's search for identity.

Crime writers Adrian McKinty and Candice Fox both use police officers as central characters in their fiction. Why and how?

Detective Chief Inspector Gary Jubelin is a senior homicide detective in the NSW police force. There's nothing fictional about his working life or the crimes he investigates.

A conversation with British American writer Tracy Chevalier about her recent books New Boy, a retelling of Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, and At the Edge of the Orchard, which is set in 19th century America and tells the story of a dysfunctional pioneer family.