RNZ: Saturday Morning

Wellington author Gigi Fenster pitched an unusual PhD proposal to the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University - she would induce a fever in herself and the result would be both an analysis of the process of inducing that fever, and whatever work that came out of it. Feverish is her memoir of that attempt, a family story, and a study in empathy. Fenster's first book, The Intentions Book, was shortlisted in the fiction category of the 2013 NZ Book Awards. She has a number of law degrees, and teaches creative writing at Rimutaka Prison.

Turkish-American Cenk Uygur is the host and founder of The Young Turks, the largest online news show in the world, with over 12 million subscribers. A trained lawyer, Uygur launched The Young Turks as a talk show on Sirius Satellite Radio in 2002. The show then became the first daily video show on YouTube in 2005, and now streams daily on its website and can also be heard as a podcast. As well as hosting the news programme and becoming CEO of the TYT Network, Uygur has also hosted shows including one on MSNBC, has written books and continues to speak widely on progressive issues.

The Calabrian Mafia is now a “monstrous global organization”, eclipsing Cosa Nostra in Sicily and Camorra from Naples, author Alex Perry says.

A selection of listener thoughts from this mornings show.

Kate Camp is the author of six collections of poetry published by Victoria University Press, the most recent of which is The internet of things (2017). She's won the New Zealand Book Award for The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls, and the Best First Book Award for Unfamiliar Legends of the Stars. Camp held the Creative New Zealand Berlin writers residency in 2011, and the Katherine Mansfield Menton fellowship in 2017. She has reviewed classic literature on Saturday Morning since 2001; today, she casts a critical glance over the Daphne du Maurier classic, Rebecca.

Peter Wells is a fiction and non-fiction writer, and a filmmaker. His first book, Dangerous Desires, won the Reed Fiction Award, the NZ Book Award, and PEN Best New Book in Prose in 1992. His memoir won the 2002 Montana NZ Book Award for Biography and his 2016 work Journey to a Hanging was long-listed for the 2016 Ockham Book Awards. Now suffering incurable cancer, Wells has just released Dear Oliver: Uncovering a Pakeha history, in which he traces his family history. He'll be a guest of the Auckland Writers Festival, May 15-20.

Australian writer Joanna Murray-Smith has written more than 20 plays and they have been translated and performed in 30 countries around the world. Her play, Honour, has been produced in more than three dozen countries, including productions on Broadway and at the Royal National Theatre in London. She has won numerous awards, including the inaugural A$30,000 Mona Brand writing award. She's visiting Aotearoa as her play, the psychological thriller Switzerland, opens at Wellington's Circa theatre on March 17. It explores the final chapter in the life of thriller writer Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr Ripley). Murray-Smith will hold a Q&A session at Circa on Sunday, March 18, at 2pm.

Professor Larissa Behrendt is an Eualeyai/Kamillaroi woman, Professor of Law at the University of Technology, Sydney, and is admitted to the Supreme Court of the ACT and NSW as a barrister. Behrendt is a Land Commissioner at the Land and Environment Court, the Alternate Chair of the Serious Offenders Review Board, a member of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia, and a founding member of the Australian Academy of Law. As well as writing novels, she has also written and directed a documentary called After the Apology, which follows four grandmothers who start a national movement to fight the continued removal of indigenous children from their homes. After the Apology is playing at the Maoriland Film Festival, March 21-25, in Otaki.

This week, the first physical memorial to a New Zealand veteran of the Spanish Civil War will be unveiled in Cromwell. The plaque, which has been funded by a group of practicing and retired NZ surgeons, will mark the service of Douglas Waddell Jolly (1904 -1983), considered one of the great war surgeons of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to trauma surgery, especially for abdominal injury, and operated closer to the front line than ever thought possible. His work informed medical services in WW2, Korea and Vietnam. Kim talks to historian Mark Derby about Doug Jolly's enduring legacy.

Sir Lloyd Geering, the controversial theologian famously charged with heresy, has turned 100, and finds he’s a lot more optimistic about the human race.

A bioplastic modelled on the nest material of a tiny native Australian bee could replace some regular plastic in aviation, electrical and construction products.

Kapka Kassabova was born and raised in Bulgaria, emigrating with her family to New Zealand in the late 1980s. In her late teens and twenties she published two poetry collections: All Roads Lead to the Sea (1997) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize winner for debut fiction in Asia Pacific, Reconnaissance (1999). In 2004, Kassabova moved to Scotland, and has since published four books, the last of which, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe (2017) was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. She has also published poetry collections. Kassabova, who now lives in the Scottish Highlands, will be a guest of the Auckland Writers Festival, May 15-20.

Alex Fegan is a documentary filmmaker who has made two features with wide release - Older Than Ireland (2015) and The Irish Pub (2013). Older Than Ireland won Best Documentary at the Galway Film Fleadh, 2015. He's also made a number of award-winning shorts, and was nominated as a Rising Star at the Irish Film and Television Academy Awards 2016, as well as the Galway Film Fleadh Bingham Ray New Talent Award, 2015. Fegan is in New Zealand to attend a screening of Older Than Ireland as part of this year's St Patrick's Festival (March 8 - 17), in Auckland. The final screening is tonight (March 10), 6.30pm at the Academy Cinema.

Dame Carol Robinson is a chemist who has pioneered the application of mass spectrometry techniques to problems in chemical biology. Her groundbreaking research on the three-dimensional structure of proteins in particular has demonstrated the power of such techniques in studying large molecular compounds. The first female Professor of Chemistry at both Oxford and Cambridge universities, in 2013 she was awarded the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services to science. Dame Carol was also the recipient of the Royal Society's prestigious Rosalind Franklin Award and Davey Medal, in 2004 and 2010, respectively. In 2015, she was the European Laureate of the L'Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science Award. Dame Carol will be in New Zealand to give a speech to the University of Canterbury's Biomolecular Interaction Centre on March 16 called "What's really inside your medicine cabinet?"

Cartoonist, graphic novelist, writer and illustrator Mimi Pond started at National Lampoon magazine in the late 1970s. She writes for television, and penned the first full-length broadcast episode of The Simpsons, which won two Emmy Awards. Pond has presented her memoir in two graphic novels - Over Easy (2014) and The Customer Is Always Wrong (2017). Over Easy won a place on the New York Times Best Seller List, the PEN Center USA award for Graphic Literature Outstanding Body of Work, and an Inkpot Award from Comic Con International in San Diego. Pond has also created comics for many publications including Los Angeles Times and Seventeen Magazine and has written five humour books. She appears this weekend at the NZ Festival Writers & Readers.