An all-Australian show: Kristina Olsson talks about Shell, her novel about the Sydney Opera House, Steve Hawke invites us in to the garage where he writes, and children's author Graeme Base explains his latest picture book, Bumblebunnies.

Jane Bodie's new play Lamb about a sheep farming family features new songs by Mark Seymour, we travel around the country to find out what to circle on your 2019 performing arts calendar, globetrotting theatre commentator Richard Jordan discusses the big Broadway and West End news, and we meet Nigel Poulton — one of Australia's best regarded fight directors.

Double J presenter Zan Rowe gives her take on this year's ARIA Awards, co-host of Guardian Australia's new #MeToo podcast Witch Hunt, a profile of Lena Dunham has set the internet ablaze, and Disney releases The Lion King remake trailer.

This week saw the passing of two greats of cinema, Nicolas Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci. Still Alice director Wash Westmoreland discusses his new film about French novelist Colette. We look at why German TV is having a moment, and a review of Steve McQueen's female heist movie, Widows.

Kwementyaye Petyarre has died at around the age of 80, Eleanor and James Avery bring some of their pop culture-inspired public art process to the studio, arts news with Claire Nichols, critic Sebastian Smee on mother of abstraction Hilma af Klint, and Sana Qadar takes us to Nick Cave's UNTIL at Carriageworks.

Bestselling author Lee Child on why he keeps returning to Jack Reacher in his fiction, mother and daughter Kirsty and Ruby Murray on being writers and related, and Toni Jordan's fifth novel The Fragments.

Melbourne's Stork Theatre stage a reading of Homer's The Odyssey in the pop-up MPavilion, voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson helps us with the accent of the typical New Yorker, Tony Award-winner Kelli O'Hara on playing The King and I's defiant schoolteacher Anna in the 21st century, and The Kransky Sisters take A Very Kransky Christmas on the road.

Pink Mountain on Locust Island is the first time Jamie Marina Lau has written a story featuring a character like her, with a Cantonese background.

ABC tech reporter Ariel Bogle on the huge Chinese social video app TikTok, Brisbane animator Joe Brumm on his hit children's animation Bluey, Courtney Act hosts new bisexual dating reality show The Bi Life, Michelle Obama's memoir Becoming sells nine copies per second, and why are fake Australian accents so bad?

We're looking at HBO's highly anticipated TV adaptation of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. Alena Lodkina's Strange Colours is one of the most acclaimed Australian debut features we've seen in a long time, and an interview with French director Philippe Le Guay about his new film Normandy Nude.