Collection: Adult Non Fiction - Biography

Is this what it feels like, I thought, losing everything? Steel shutters were clanging down in my head: I dared not even think about my son, just emerging from his teenage years, or of my sorry future. But I could safely bear witness and carry on writing in my head. A correspondent from a hidden ...

Samuel Johnson was a critic, an essayist, a poet and a biographer. He was also, famously, the compiler of the first good English dictionary, published in 1755. A polymath and a great conversationalist, his intellectual and social curiosity were boundless. Yet he was a deeply melancholy man, haunt...

Austrian writer Stefan Zweig's final work, posted to his publisher the day before his tragic death, brings the destruction of a war-torn Europe vividly to life. Written as both a recollection of the past, and as a warning for future generations, The World of Yesterday recalls the golden age of li...

The follow-up to Fiona Wright's essay collection Small Acts of Disappearance - winner of the Nita B. Kibble Award and the Queensland Literary Award for Non-fiction, shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the NSW Premier's Award for Non-fiction. Our bodies and homes are our shelters, each one intima...

What makes us fall in love with a song? What makes us want to write our own songs? Do songs help? Do songs help us live better lives? And do the lives we live help us write better songs? Following publication of Let's Go (So We Can Get Back) and How To Write One Song, both New York Times bestsell...

Clarice Beckett was one of Australia's most important early Modernist painters, excelling in portraiture, still-life and landscape. The discovery of a trove of her artworks has led to her remarkable talent and evocative art being recognised afresh and greatly admired. Clarice Beckett was self-eff...

Bharti Dhir faced many challenges in her childhood that could have broken her. As a baby, she was abandoned at a bus stop in Uganda before being adopted by Punjabi-Sikh parents. Growing up as a biracial, female child and a refugee, she experienced an insidious chain of racism and sexism in her co...

A gripping, painfully honest, and ultimately inspirational memoir from global superstar and creator of the Red Table Talk series Jada Pinkett Smith. Along the way, she explores her path to accepting her power as a woman, and her discovery that a strong sense of self is every woman's right and sav...