Books and Arts explores the many worlds of performance, writing, music and visual arts, and features interviews with local and international authors and artists.
Latest Programs
Thursday 9 Feb 2017
Award winning The Book of Mormon musical is showing in Melbourne at the moment. It’s funny, has lots of catchy tunes but it’s incredibly offensive. How does it get away with it?
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Helen Britton's jewellery explores themes of memory, industry, horror and home.
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A play looks at the emotional legacy of the 2011 Japanese earthquake – the most powerful earthquake ever recorded to hit Japan, triggering catastrophic tsunami waves and causing level 7 meltdowns at the Fukushima Nuclear power plant.
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With bright red hair and perfect makeup, Ruth Malone attracts the eye. But when her children go missing, those same features make the police see her as a suspect.
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Wednesday 8 Feb 2017
With the Brexit bill currently making its way through the UK's parliament, we ask how leaving the European Union might affect arts and culture in the UK.
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What do you know about Sweden during the Cold War?
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Heard This and Thought of You is a collaboration between two musicians and nine writers, which celebrates the evocative power of music.
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News from the world of books and arts, including the announcement of the Stella Prize longlist and MOMA’s decision to show work by artists from countries affected by President Trump’s travel ban.
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Australian writer Stephen Greenall shares his favourite works of art.
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Tuesday 7 Feb 2017
Thirty Russian writers have protested against Russian PEN for expelling journalist Sergey Parkhomenko. Bestselling author Boris Akunin is one of them. He tells us why he quit the organisation.
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Five days with a retired concrete engineer in Western Australia in 2006, and it's funny.
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A darker side of Botticelli is revealed in his map of Dante's hell.
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We sample some of the offerings at this year's Fringe World Festival in Perth.
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Monday 6 Feb 2017
How many artists can say they were inspired when the Australia Council budget was slashed?
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The noted Australian artist Leonard French, best known for his much-loved stained glass ceiling of the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria, died last month in Melbourne.
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Artist Olga Cironis is collecting human hair and weaving it into a giant mat, aiming for 500m long (she's done 50m so far), and collecting the names of everyone who has contributed.
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Comedian and uber-successful children's author, David Walliams, on what makes him laugh.
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Saturday 4 Feb 2017
Not an animal or a plant, a comprehensive show of Vernon Ah Kee's work, tackles racism in Australia head on.
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I Am My Own Wife is a Pulitzer prize-winning play that’s being staged at Melbourne’s Midsumma Festival for queer arts.
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Indigenous writer, director and actor Leah Purcell wins Australia’s richest single literary prize, the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature for The Drover’s Wife.
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There's growing speculation that President Trump will take an axe to the federal funding body, the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Friday 3 Feb 2017
A super fan and literary academic gets up close and personal with thriller writer, Lee Child.
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Books on the Rail puts books on trains, buses and trams for you to enjoy.
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A new novel that explores the 'ravines of smeared disarray'. Everyday objects and interior lives.
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Thursday 2 Feb 2017
Author, art critic and television presenter John Berger died this January at 90. We reconsider the impact of his most famous work, Ways of Seeing.
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Novelist and US Young People's Poet Laureate Jacqueline Woodson marched from the New York Public Library to Trump Towers to deliver a pointed message to the new political establishment. She wasn't alone.
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Why do some songs stay with us months, years, or even decades later?
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