Acclaimed actress Miriam Margolyes is narrating Prokofiev's symphonic tale for children Peter and the Wolf for the Adelaide Festival; the maverick Australian director Barrie Kosky on his opera of George Frideric Handel's Saul also on at Adelaide Festival and The Manganiyar Classroom directed by renowned Indian theatre director Roysten Abel, which features the ancient tradition of song performed by Manganiyar children from India's Rajasthan Thar Desert region.

Today we celebrate International Women's Day! Katie Noonan joins Sarah Kanowski for the full hour and you'll hear Shannon Logan's favourite tracks by women. We ask two female comedians whether International Women's Day makes them laugh, cry or cheer; then we meet Australian romance writer Fiona Lowe, who has sold well over a million copies of her 28 novels; author and journalist Dr Anne Summers discusses why she's inspired by the French writer, feminist and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir; and we end with Australian Indigenous poet Ali Cobby Eckermann, who has won the US Windham-Campbell Prize, one of the world's richest literary prizes.

Jessie Burton's The Muse.

From the Perth Writers Festival, debut authors Rajith Savanadasa and Chinelo Okparanta discuss their novels about family, love and coming of age in nations divided by civil war.

We meet Inua Ellams, a poet, playwright, performer and designer whose work explores the themes of identity; then we learn why so many 19th century French novelists wrote about visual art; then we hear about a new Australian play, Mark Colvin's Kidney, tells the unlikely story of a friendship between an ABC journalist and a woman who became his kidney donor; and finish with the next in our series of letters inspired by music, Heard This and Thought of You.

We meet the newly appointed Artistic Associate of the Queensland Ballet, Liam Scarlett; head to the Adelaide Festival for Betroffenheit: a hybrid production of dance and theatre that was inspired by actor Jonathan Young's own personal grief; speak to John Boyne about his latest novel, The Heart's Invisible Furies; and explore the changing world of Archie.

First, Michael Rosen follows the famous French author Émile Zola in exile in London after he was sentenced to prison for his vocal support of Alfred Dreyfus; then more in our Heard This and Thought of You series: today a letter from Robert Dessaix; and finally we take a look at the state of writing science fiction in Australia.

We explore the connection between 19th century French novels and art with author Anka Muhlstein, review a couple of crowd-pleasing new art exhibitions with Pulitzer prize-winning critic Sebastian Smee, and hear about the new play Mark Colvin's Kidney.

Luke Davies on the red carpet and the Oscars gaffe, NZ poet laureate, critic, novelist and elder statesman C K Stead, Jeff Sparrow on actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson, and Cassie McCullagh revisits Michael Gow's play 'Away'

John at the MTC by Pulitzer prize-winning writer Annie Baker, ahead of the Oscars screenwriter Luke Davies on Lion, Dorothy Hewett Award winner for unpublished manuscript Odette Kelada on her novel Drawing Sybylla and US bestselling author Christina Baker Kline on her novel A Piece of the World.