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The end of the golden age of biography Biographer Kathryn Hughes asks whether it is the end of the golden age of biography because all the most interesting subjects have already been written into the history books. Writers as readers: Luke Davies At the recent Sydney Writers' Festival a number of prominent Australian authors talked about what they read and the books that have inspired them. A Paddock in his Head by Brendan Ryan (review) Australian poet Brendan Ryan's work is informed by his experience of growing up on a dairy farm in the 1960s and '70s. His first collection Why I Am Not a Farmer was published in 2000. Since then his poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Best Australian Poetry 2006. Brendan Ryan's latest book A Paddock in his Head has poems about the inner suburbs, the Bellarine Peninsula and travelling overseas, but the central theme is his family's farm. It's reviewed for The Book Show by Geoff Page.

She was raised in Christchurch, started singing in church at the age of five and, with a mix of Fijian and Welsh blood, she has quite a voice. Tina Harrod is now being touted as a very important voice on the Australian scene.

The concept of appreciation

Fan fiction - the creative and legal pitfalls The adulatory, and sometimes legally risky, world of fan fiction: where readers who can't get enough of their favourite books, TV series and movies, create new stories and take the characters to new places. Timbuktu manuscripts: Rodney Hall The Timbuktu manuscripts tell a history of African trade and scholarship. They include texts about astronomy, poetry, music, medicine, religion and women's rights. Because of their significance to African history there is a joint African movement to preserve them. Rodney Hall, one of our most eminent writers, has just been to Timbuktu and describes what he found.

Poem from the collection Twenty-First Century.

Skin Deep: Facades In the architecture business a new specialisation has emerged - one that just deals with facades. Making a significant mark worldwide in this area is Front Inc, based in New York. Since Front began in 2002 the firm has worked with all the world´s pre-eminent architects - Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and Tadao Ando. In the design world they are the façade consultant of choice. They have worked with OMA (Rem Koolhaas's firm) on the CCTV building, opening soon in Beijing. Prefab housing For many people, the term 'prefab housing' conjures up images of demountable aluminum boxes in caravan parks, a substandard home that they associate with impoverished circumstances. Trends: vertical gardens Trends and Products is the part of the show where each week we discuss developments in a particular part of the designed world. TV chefs Why does Gordon Ramsey bestride the foodie world in the way he does? In Conversation: Chefs from the warzone This week a conversation with Tania Cammerano, editor of the on-line food site taste.com.au, about what it takes to be a TV chef and why the world of TV chefdom is a little bit weird these days.

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon Born in 1964, Aleksandar Hemon grew up in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and became a journalist. In 1992 he travelled to America on a US-sponsored goodwill tour. His home city came under siege while he was in Chicago, where he stayed as a refugee. After a wide variety of low-level, minimum-wage jobs, he started writing in his second language, English, in 1995. His acclaimed collection of stories The Question of Bruno provoked comparisons with Conrad, Nabokov and Kundera when it appeared in 2000 and won several awards. His new book is The Lazarus Project. Aleksandar Hemon won one of the American MacArthur Foundations' famed "genius grants" in 2004 to fund research for the book which is an exploration of immigration and identity.

A Visit to Binghamton (An Ode to Rod)

Fareed Zakaria (Part 2) Newsweek International's editor, Fareed Zakaria, returns to the program to discuss the latest political developments in the US and abroad - in particular, in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Music and the Brain Oliver Sacks' latest book "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" is a collection of twenty-nine essays on subjects ranging from musical seizures, the fear of music, musical savants, music and blindness, dementia and music therapy, and musical dreams.

The Dark Knight Salute The week in film Actors holding out The Screen Actor´s Guild (what a dreary acronym, SAG, for a group of workers whose job it is to project energy on screen) is still holding out against the studios on the new contract negotiations. Interview with Benjamin Gilmour, director - 'Son of a Lion' Every now and then an outsider comes along who confounds all accepted wisdom about filmmaking by picking up a camera and doing it very well indeed. Trash and Treasure: Rosemary Blight on 'Bagdad Cafe'

Travel writing What skills do the best travel writers use to interpret the world around them? And where do travel writers fit now, in a world where blogging means anyone can share stories and give helpful hints? To talk about the role of travel writers and how travel writing has changed over the years, Ramona Koval is joined by two guest speakers at the Melbourne Festival of Travel Writing. The Red Tree composer Michael Yezerski A few months ago we spoke to the remarkable artist and storyteller Shaun Tan about his most recent book, a collection of short stories called Tales From Outer Suburbia, and at that time he spoke about the many adaptations of his books to theatre, film and now to music.

Emerging writers: Kate Mulvany Earlier this year the Emerging Writers' Festival promoted itself by saying it presents the best Australian writers you haven't heard of...yet. One of the writers at the festival was actor and playwright Kate Mulvany. She won the 2004 Philip Parsons Young Playwright's Award and her most recent play is called The Seed. This play began as a novel 10 years ago but became a play, she talks about this process and how it ended up on the stage. Playing cards in Cairo with Hugh Miles Cairo is the biggest city in Africa, a kaleidoscope of races, religions, sects and politics. British journalist and self-styled bar fly Hugh Miles lived and worked there for some years and fell in love with an Egyptian doctor, Roda. Hugh and Roda were eventually married and Hugh's book about their time of courtship, called Playing Cards in Cairo, is a window onto the political, religious and cultural tensions under which women in Egypt live. Writers as Readers - Christos Tsiolkas At the recent Sydney Writers' Festival a number of prominent Australian authors talked about the books and writers who have inspired them. One of those taking part was Christos Tsiolkas, author of Loaded, The Jesus Man and Dead Europe. He has also written several plays, including Who's Afraid of the Working Class? Christos Tsiolkas talks about the influences on his literary education.

A new book to be published later this month has raised concerns that Australia's tough export rules are discouraging people from buying Aboriginal art. Critics say the criteria for getting a permit to take works out of the country are no longer appropriate, and the approval process takes far too long.

Next week, colonial Australia's very first work of art will be sold at auction.

Spurious and bogus Botany Bay literature Bogus stories about imaginary voyages to the Antipodes were popular in Britain in the 18th century. Ali Alizadeh - The New Angel Imagine dreading having to sit a test at school the next day, then waking up in the morning to find all your prayers have been answered: your school has been destroyed in an air attack. This happened both to Iranian-born Australian author Ali Alizadeh and Bahram, the main character in his novel The New Angel.

The lobsterman read through the downloaded directions, then scanned the rental documentation, then skipped over the tourist information.

The Rev'd Albert McPherson has had two main callings in life, one to the Anglican Church and the other to the theatre. Late in life, he decided that he could fulfil his passion for the arts by being the chaplain to the Victorian Arts Centre in Melbourne, where he's eased the suffering and the jitters of many a star performer.

There are only some twenty people still fluent in the Adnyamathanya language of the Indigenous people of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. But they are teaching many others, passing on their cultural heritage to all who are willing to learn. (This year's NAIDOC Week is being celebrated 6-13 July. NAIDOC celebrates the survival of Indigenous culture and the Indigenous contribution to modern Australia.)

Writing, procrastination and creativity Today we ride the pendulum of creativity that swings between writers block and hypergraphia.

The weird world of darts It's not quite the sport of kings, but darts (yes darts) inspires passionate fans and charismatic champions. For thirty years the man describing each flighted flick has been Sid Waddell, doyen of darts commentators. (This program was originally broadcast on 09/03/07)

Australian sedition laws revisited Before the last election the then shadow Arts Minister, Peter Garrett, told The Book Show that if Labor were elected the new government would move immediately to repeal the sedition laws. So far the legislation is still in place.

Distracted In America a study has found that workers not only switch tasks every three minutes during their work day, but nearly half the time they interrupt themselves. Moreover, once someone´s been interrupted it can take up to 25 minutes to return to the main task. Maggie Jackson has been researching this syndrome and other ways we get distracted and has written a book about it. The premise of her book is that the way we live is eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention. In other words it´s attention that is the greatest casualty of our high-tech age.

Amy Hempel - Dog of the Marriage Amy Hempel is celebrated all over the world as a short story writer who is among the best of the best. In her latest collection of short stories Dog of the Marriage Amy Hempel writes about the misfortunes and moments of revelation in people's marriages and in their lives.

Standard Operating Procedure - Philip Gourevitch Philip Gourevitch was covering the 2004 presidential election for the New Yorker magazine in the year the Abu Ghraib photographs came out showing the abuse of prisoners by American soldiers. He expected that this would change the nature of the conversation about America's conduct of the Iraq war. This didn't happen and ultimately only a handful of low-ranking soldiers were convicted of abusing prisoners. When filmmaker Errol Morris began to send him transcripts of interviews he had done with some of those soldiers Philip Gourevitch decided to work on a book with Morris looking at who and what was hidden by the framing. The book, like the film, is called Standard Operating Procedure.

Sue looks at the week ahead in television, in particular the new ABC1 satire, The Hollowmen.

Memoir sojourn -- life writing in Paris The schedule for one memoir writing workshop in Paris goes something like this: day one arrive, day two explore the local environs, day three learn about literary Paris, and on the fourth day learn to write your own memoir. For the next two weeks do workshops, indulge in coffee and cake from the local boulangerie and, of course, write. Writing for children without a message - Kim Kane Kim Kane says that while she doesn't like chickens or gumboots, which are apparently both prerequisites for being a children's writer, she does like children and her debut novel has just come out, it's called Pip: The Story of Olive. The Endangered List by Brian Westlake (review) After Steve Irwin died from a stingray spear through his heart, academic and commentator Germain Greer said that 'The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin'. She was broadly criticised for these comments. Perhaps that's why the author of The Endangered List - a parody of Irwin, his family and Australia Zoo - chose to write under a pseudonym? He called himself Brian Westlake which is actually the name of a crocodile and it's the name of the main character in this book.

FOODSTUFF: (1) Figgin' Fish Soup; (2) Saucy Chipped Beef

The Science of Fiction When it comes to literature, are we what we read? Well, if you read novels, it seems that the answer is 'Yes'. Cognitive scientists at the University of Toronto in Canada claim to have found that reading fiction affects our psychology, in effect re-wiring our brains as we process the emotional ebb and flow of character and plot. André Schiffrin - A Political Education André Schiffrin was born in Paris, the son of one of France's most esteemed publishers, into a world that included some of the day's leading writers and intellectuals. This world changed completely when the Nazis marched into Paris on André's fifth birthday. Schiffrin's memoir A Political Education: Coming of Age in Paris and New York recounts the twists and turns of a life that saw Schiffrin become, himself, one of the world's most respected publishers.

Richard Wright: The Life and Times In the year that marks the centenary of his birth, Richard Wright's biographer Hazel Rowley reviews the achievements of this African-American author who wrote powerful and at times controversial novels, short stories, poetry and non-fiction. Dreams from my Father - Barack Obama (review) As well as being a candidate for the United States presidency, Barack Obama is an author. His first book Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance was originally published in 1995 and has recently been re-released. It was written before Obama became involved in politics and is part meditation on race relations and part personal memoir. In it he writes about his childhhood, his years as an organiser in Chicago and his family connection with Kenya.

The week in film Actors holding out for better deal There could be another strike in Hollywood -- this time with the actors, who may down tools if an agreement over a new pay contract isn´t reached. The producers put their final offer on the table this week, but the Screen Actors Guild, which numbers about 120,000, wants to hold out for a better deal that beefs up new media and DVD royalties. Ten Empty Interview with Brendan Cowell, Anthony Hayes: Ten Empty Ten Empty was co-written by actor Brendan Cowell and director Anthony Hayes. It's a film about a father-son relationship they say they had to make to get on with their lives. Standard Operating Procedure Trash and Treasure: Roy Billing on 'Bad Blood' Hancock Children of the Silk Road