We speak to 2017 Man Booker Prize for Fiction winner George Saunders, hear about a dance work that explores the Arab Israeli conflict, and visit the Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art in Adelaide.

Batavia shipwreck exhibition at the University of Western Australia, choreographer Wayne McGregor's dance work Tree of Codes at Melbourne Festival, Tasmanian gothic fiction with Rachel Leary and Rohan Wilson.

An exhibition of artists from the tiny Erub Island in the Torres Strait and Dean Cross' PolyAustralis on at the Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aborginal and Torres Strait Islander Art in Adelaide, Australian author, actor and comedian Shaun Micallef turns his hand to children's books with a collection of fairy stories for younger readers called Tales from a Tall Forest, and Australia Day is the debut collection of short stories from Melanie Cheng - and it won her the 2016 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.

Join us for the best of this week's Books and Arts.

Art critic Sebastian Smee takes a look at the work and career of Gerhard Richter ahead his first major Australia exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, and Kate Evans finds out why Daniel Handler's latest book about teen sexuality could only be published in America as an adult novel. We also check in with Michael Cathcart who is in Adelaide for the Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, and head to the bushland with WA sculptor Kim Perrier.

Birds, Art, Life, Death: A Field Guide to the Small and Significant is a book exploring writer Kyo Maclear's own Toronto backyard. A conversation recorded at the 2017 Brisbane Writers Festival

We revisit the work of writer and composer Anthony Burgess in the year of the centenary of his birth, visit a lab dedicated to the restoration and preservation of frames at the National Gallery of Victoria and investigate an art exhibition that explores the connection between gardening and being an artist.

Maggie O'Farrell's book of true stories I am I am I am, The Pop-Up Globe in Australia, Joseph Kosuth's art exhibition A Short History of My Thought, Code Breakers an exhibition about women in the video game industry at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

Playwright Nathan Maynard tells us about his love-filled comedy about an Aboriginal family The Season, English writer Cressida Cowell's new magical series The Wizards of Once, Brisbane writer Brentley Frazer shares his favourite works of art for Top Shelf and West Australian artist Lori Pensini.

Join us for the best of this week's Books and Arts.