Visual artist Brook Andrew on his 25 year retrospective at the NGV; What is weird fiction and what makes it so uncanny? Writer Kathryn Heyman shares her Top Shelf, International theatre producer Richard Jordon with his wrap on three Australian festivals.

The March novel in our Latin American Book Club is Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, a novel scented with rose petals, chillies and passion.

We check out Sydney's new visual arts collaboration The National, find out about a series of novels that help children to understand natural disasters, and ask: what role should cultural diplomacy play in arts funding?

UK comedians Jenny Éclair and James Veitch tell us about their shows at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival; Catherine McKinnon's novel Storyland is an imaginative take on Australia's history and its possible futures; and we explore weird fiction, which sits on the edge of the speculative fiction genre.

We begin with Tony Grybowski, the Chief Executive of the Australia Council, to learn about the impact that the government's scrapped Catalyst arts fund has had, both on the Australia Council and on the arts sector across Australia; then we examine the life and fiction of the twentieth-century English novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, best-known for her series The Cazalets; and we end with international theatre producer Richard Jordan, who reviews the Adelaide Festival, Adelaide Fringe, and Tasmania's Ten Days on the Island festival.

Editor of Der Spiegel, Dirk Kurbjuweit's novel Fear, Camilla Nelson on spinsters in English fiction and Ashley Hay's novel A Hundred Small Lessons.

The shifts in the power balance between China and the US since 1989 are explored in the new Sydney Theatre Company production, Chimerica; Michael Adams joins us to discuss his book, In Praise of Profanity; and we journey beyond the Vinyl Frontier to listen to the 1968 track The Windmills of Your Mind again, and again, and again.

Brook Andrew looks back on 25 years of Art, Tracey Moffatt gets ready for the Venice Biennale, Carlos Celdran paints a picture of Manila, and Damen O'Brien takes out the Peter Porter Poetry Prize

We start with the shifts in the power balance between China and the US since 1989, which are explored in the new Sydney Theatre Company production, Chimerica; then we travel to five old sheds in Tasmania to explore an art and musical trail that fills them with sound; and finally, we journey beyond the Vinyl Frontier to listen to the 1968 track The Windmills of Your Mind again, and again, and again.

Journalist Armando Lucas Correa's debut novel The German Girl, Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting on the Australian stage, Helen Garner's 'Heard this and Thought of You' letter and a review of the book to film adaptation of Jasper Jones.