Dempsey's People: vivid portraits of London's working class at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Children's Book Council of Australia Awards 2017. Pip Smith's novel Half Wild. Harana Poetry and the art of the Philippines at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

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

Tony Jones, the host of the ABC's Q&A program, has just released his first novel, which travels between the streets of Sydney, the corridors of Parliament House, and the mountains of Yugoslavia, and Sydney Dance Company is back with a double bill featuring the work of acclaimed Australian choreographer Gabrielle Nankivell.

We explore Prelude, a national initiative that provides long-term residencies for Australian composers to make work in historic houses around Australia and for Science Week we speak with the artists behind LightTime, an exhibition on at Scienceworks in Melbourne where art mingles with science, asking visitors to engage with works that explore light, sound and optics. We also ask: what is the unreliable narrator and why is it so popular in books and films?

We delve into the world of art prizes in Australia and ask: do prizes distort our idea of art?, discuss the novel Taboo with acclaimed Australian author Kim Scott, and meet the creators of Sista Girl, a play about reconciliation, culture and family.

Lullabies at Supersense Festival of the Ecstatic. The origins of the Alphabet song. The Brave New World of Australia in the 1930s. Malthouse Theatre's new production reimagines the story of the Elephant Man.

Victoria's La Trobe Regional Gallery's world first exhibition of surrealist artist René Magritte's films and photographs, the winners of the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, a new dedicated home for Indigenous art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia and Brodie Lancaster's new memoir No Way! Okay, Fine.

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

Tex Perkins on Tex. Indian Film Festival of Melbourne. Basketball star Patty Mills' children's book series.

36 Questions is a new podcast musical that cleverly mixes these two disparate forms, playwright and screen writer Andrew Bovell reflects on over thirty years of putting words in other people's mouths and Sandra Leigh Price's new novel The River Sings explores the story of an English gypsy family.