Life Sentences Podcast

Caroline Baum
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What is the secret to writing a really juicy biography? Author Caroline Baum interviews seasoned players and persistent newcomers who share their experience of navigating sensitive territory in the search for the real story behind a person’s life. Whether they are writing about the famous or the forgotten, whether their version of events is authorised orunauthorised, biography is a high-stakes quest full of twists and turns.

  1. 6D AGO

    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, working through the same archives, talking to the same sources, each well aware of the other. This double shot of attention is ironic, given that Harrower was best known in the fifties for her novels The Long Prospect and The Watchtower, but withdrew a subsequent novel from publication and vanished from the literary landscape until she was rediscovered in 2012 by a publisher keen to revive her work for a new audience. Both Trinca and Wyndham met Harrower on several occasions. What conclusions did they come to and where do they differ in how they see Harrower’s life and work? How do they interpret her decision to sabotage her career? In their first joint conversation, Trinca and Wyndham compare notes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    54 min

  2. FEB 5

    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 biography of her sister and their family, exposing some of the darker aspects of life with their QC father Chester Porter. A restless traveler, a passionate lesbian who fell in love as easily as breathing, Dorothy Porter consumed life at a heightened intensity and velocity. Her best known works made poetry part of the mainstream, including the crime verse novel The Monkey’s Mask. She beat cancer, but died in 2008 at the age of just 54, of pneumonia. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    1h 7m

  3. JAN 29

    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 athletic man become the world’s first millionaire author? And why did he leave the US to set up camp on the south coast of NSW with a large entourage, generating massive public and media interest?   The Last Days of Zane Grey documents a man with a complex temperament driven by a larger than life appetite for the chase - of big game fish at sea, and of women on land. With a flair for hyperbole and self-promotion that was ahead of his time, Grey is part Hollywood, part Hemingway.   Hastrich’s lively and entertaining biography sparkles with prose that brings the ocean to shimmering life on the page while also capturing almost farcical moments of mishap involving a fake shark. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    1h 3m

  4. JAN 22

    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 and activist, primarily championing abortion rights. But it also explores the shadows in her life; including her struggles with her mental and physical health, and her lifelong fascination with all aspects of human sexuality, including her own, which she regarded as androgynous. When it came to Bea Faust, nothing was taboo; her contemporary Helen Garner declared she was not afraid of anything, and this book certainly confirms that fearlessness and curiosity were key aspects of her intellect. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    1h 9m

  5. JAN 15

    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 reappear in her films, especially the ordinary lives of working people. She once said that if you opened her up, you would find beaches inside her.   After studying art she became a photographer, tutored by Georges Brassaï. When she turned her attention to film, she became the only female member of the so called Nouvelle Vague or New Wave in French cinema, alongside Francois Truffaut, Jean Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Eric Rohmer.   Defying categorisation she made both feature films and documentaries, zig zagging between the two, following her curiosity wherever it led for more than sixty years. Her marriage to fellow film-maker Jacques Demy was unconventional in that both were bi-sexual, but their love was enduring.   Varda received an honorary Oscar and an honorary Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. She died in 2019 at the age of 90, of cancer. She remains a revered figure in world cinema, admired by directors and audiences alike, more popular than in her lifetime.   Biographer Carrie Rickey is an American film critic met Varda on several occasions informally at film festivals but never discussed the possibility of writing her biography. Her book A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnes Varda was written without the co-operation of Varda’s family but with the help of many of her collaborators and friends. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    33 min

  6. JAN 8

    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 denied because of being partly Asian.   After the war Harry faces a new challenge: becoming a soldier settler and orchardist. This proves to be harder than war, while his family life is messy and puzzling. Much later, at an age when many would be contemplating retirement, he is recruited into Australian intelligence, but totally unprepared for the role. His cause of death is disputed and he is denied a military headstone.   When he discovers this final injustice, author Ryan Butta becomes indignant and goes beyond the role of biographer to intervene on behalf of Harry and those like him who never got the acknowledgement they deserved. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    59 min

  7. JAN 1

    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 celebrates different facets of their admiration for Jane Austen in terms of her characters, and her social commentary on class, entitlement, her love of nature, and the dynamics of family.   To learn more about Jane Austen I recommend Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen - a life in small things See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    50 min

  8. 12/25/2025

    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 Thacker had known for two decades that Alice’s daughter Andrea had been sexually molested by her stepfather Gerald Fremlin. When Andrea approached Thacker to ask him to make revisions to the manuscript of his book, in the light of this information, it was just at the point when the manuscript was complete and about to be printed, and he declined. He declined again when a revised edition of the book appeared several years later. He has always maintained that as an archival scholar, he had no interest in personal family dynamics and in the psychological aspects of Alice’s oeuvre.   Gerald Fremlin pled guilt to a charge of indecent assault and served a suspended sentence with two years probation. Alice Munro chose to remain with Fremlin rather than support her daughter.   In this episode Caroline Baum talks to Robert Thacker and explores the uncomfortable moral terrain of a biographer when presented with explosive material that they feel is beyond the scope of their particular focus and asks where does the biographer’s responsibility lies.   To read an in-depth account of Andrea Skinner’s experience and its repercussions for her, for Alice Munro and for Munro’s reading public, go to the excellent piece by New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/alice-munros-passive-voice   There is also an essay by Anne Enright in her latest anthology Attention, on the Munro affair. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    48 min
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What is the secret to writing a really juicy biography? Author Caroline Baum interviews seasoned players and persistent newcomers who share their experience of navigating sensitive territory in the search for the real story behind a person’s life. Whether they are writing about the famous or the forgotten, whether their version of events is authorised orunauthorised, biography is a high-stakes quest full of twists and turns.

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