Biographers International Organization

Podcast #253 – “Four Paths, One Impossible Dream,” Part IV: Challenging the Canon

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 14:00:54 +0000

In this fourth episode of our six-part miniseries, Sara finds out that President Lincoln presided over the largest mass execution on American soil, and she wants to know why nobody taught her that. Kevin has a death certificate that answers a question other scholars keep pretending is a mystery. Katie Rose reads congressional testimony from a hundred years ago that could have been written this morning. And Kate has to reckon with the fact that one of her subjects was a racist. The ideas. The arguments. The stuff that keeps them up at night, and BIO Podcast producer Jenny Skoog explores these dilemmas with the four authors.

“Four Paths, One Impossible Dream” follows four authors navigating the challenges of writing biography. Over eight months in 2025, BIO Podcast producer Jenny Skoog spoke with comedian Sara Benincasa, tackling Abraham Lincoln; professor Kate Culkin, working on a book about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughters; historian Kevin McGruder, who has spent decades researching Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher; and journalist Katie Rose Quandt, on the challenges of completing a book proposal while pregnant.

Podcast #252 – “Four Paths, One Impossible Dream,” Part III: The Business of Biography

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 14:00:40 +0000

The third episode of our six-part miniseries goes behind the scenes of biography’s business realities — the contracts, proposals, and market pressures authors navigate to get their books published. “Four Paths, One Impossible Dream” follows four authors navigating the challenges of writing biography. Over eight months in 2025, BIO Podcast producer Jenny Skoog spoke with comedian Sara Benincasa, tackling Abraham Lincoln; professor Kate Culkin, working on a book about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughters; historian Kevin McGruder, who has spent decades researching Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher; and journalist Katie Rose Quandt, on the challenges of completing a book proposal while pregnant.

Podcast #251 – “Four Paths, One Impossible Dream,” Part II: The Work

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:00:52 +0000

In the second episode of our special six-part miniseries, the authors share updates on their research and writing. “Four Paths, One Impossible Dream” follows four authors navigating the challenges of writing biography. Over eight months in 2025, BIO Podcast producer Jenny Skoog spoke with comedian Sara Benincasa, tackling Abraham Lincoln; professor Kate Culkin, working on a book about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughters; historian Kevin McGruder, who has spent decades researching Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher; and journalist Katie Rose Quandt, on the challenges of completing a book proposal while pregnant.

Podcast #250 – “Four Paths, One Impossible Dream,” Part I

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 14:00:54 +0000

This time, we present the first episode in a special six-part miniseries that follows four authors on their biographical path. We spent the last eight months of 2025 with comedian Sara Benincasa who is tackling Abraham Lincoln; professor Kate Culkin is publishing a book about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughters that nobody taught her how to promote; historian Kevin McGruder has been carrying around his subject, Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher, for decades; and journalist Katie Rose Quandt is finishing a book proposal about five influential women while pregnant with her third child. BIO member Jenny Skoog sat down with each of these writers to ask the obvious question: who gets to write biography?

Podcast #249 – David Margolick

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:00:10 +0000

When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy is the latest book by veteran journalist and author David Margolick. Published by Schocken in November 2025, this book examines the life of one of America’s most enigmatic and influential comedians. Margolick reported on legal affairs for The New York Times, and he was then a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. His many books include Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and A World on the Brink, Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns, and Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock. Fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli interviewed David Margolick.

Podcast #248 – Peter Cozzens

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 15:00:17 +0000

Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West (Knopf, 2025) is the latest book by this award-winning author and editor of nineteen books on the American Civil War and the American West. A retired Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State, Cozzens also served as a captain in the U. S. Army. His previous book, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West, received the 2017 Gilder Lehrman Prize for the best military history work in the English language. In December 2024, The Economist selected it as one of the seven greatest military history books ever written. In 2002, Cozzens received the American Foreign Service Association’s highest award, given annually to one Foreign Service Officer for exemplary moral courage, integrity, and creative dissent. Fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell interviewed Peter Cozzens.

Podcast #247 – Ethelene Whitmire

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:00:00 +0000

This author’s The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram: The Man Who Stared Down World War II in the Name of Love was published by Viking/Penguin Random House this month. Whitmire is a respected historian and African American Studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research has won awards and funding from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Programs, and the American Library Association, and she has been invited to residences at Yaddo, Ucross, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Fellow biographer and BIO member Eric K. Washington interviewed Ethelene Whitmire.

Podcast #246 – Andrew Maraniss

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 15:00:35 +0000

Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South (Vanderbilt University, March 2024) is the tenth anniversary edition of this author’s award-winning, New York Times bestselling biography. Maraniss has authored nonfiction sports and social justice books for adults, teens, and children, and his books have received numerous honors, including the Lillian Smith Book Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Special Recognition Honor. He has been named to the American Library Association’s Rainbow Book List, the RISE Feminist Book List, and Esquire’s 100 Best Baseball Books Ever Written. Maraniss directs special projects at the Vanderbilt University athletic department and manages the university’s Sports & Society Initiative. BIO member and BIO podcast producer Jenny Skoog interviewed Andrew Maraniss.

Podcast #245 – Ashley D. Farmer

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 15:00:39 +0000

Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audrey Moore, published by Pantheon in November 2025, is this latest book by this internationally known and award-winning writer, cultural analyst, and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Farmer’s first book, Remaking Black Power, was shortlisted for numerous prizes, and she has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Whiting Foundation. Farmer’s insights have appeared in multiple venues, including Harper’s Bazaar, NPR, The Washington Post, and Teen Vogue. Fellow biographer and BIO member Tamara Payne interviewed Ashley D. Farmer.

Podcast #244 – Andrew S. Curran

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 15:00:59 +0000

This author and scholar’s latest book, Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson, will be published in February 2026 by Other Press. Curran, a distinguished humanities professor at Wesleyan University, has written or edited six books, including Who’s Black and Why: A Hidden Chapter in the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race. It was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and it won the Association of American Publishers Prose Award. Curran’s journalistic writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Guardian, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Paris Review, Il Pais, Folha de S. Paola and the Wall Street Journal. BIO member and BIO podcast producer Jenny Skoog interviewed Andrew Curran.

Podcast #243 – Carla Kaplan & Amanda Vaill

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:00:33 +0000

Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford and Pride (Harper, November 2025) and Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, October 2025) are the latest books by these veteran authors. Carla Kaplan is an award-winning Northeastern University professor who has published seven previous books, including Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters and Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, both New York Times Notable Books.

Amanda Vaill has authored three previous biographies, Hotel Florida, Somewhere, and the best-selling Everybody Was So Young – a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She also co-authored, contributed to, or edited several books in the field of arts and culture. Vaill is an Emmy-nominated screenwriter, and her journalism and criticism have appeared in many publications. In December 2025, Kaplan’s Troublemaker and Vail’s Pride and Pleasure biographies were longlisted for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Awards. In this special episode, Kaplan and Vaill interview each other about their research and writing journeys.

Podcast #242 – Ron Chernow, Part II

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:00:44 +0000

Mark Twain, published in May 2025 by Penguin Press, is this celebrated, multiple award-winning biographer’s latest book. Chernow is the recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal, and his first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award. Chernow’s Washington: A Life won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and Alexander Hamilton—the inspiration for the Broadway musical—won the George Washington Book Prize. Ron Chernow, a former president of PEN America, has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and is one of only three living biographers to have won the Gold Medal for Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell interviewed him.

Listen to part one of the interview here.

Podcast #241 – Ron Chernow, Part I

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 16:28:06 +0000

Mark Twain, published in May 2025 by Penguin Press, is this celebrated, multiple award-winning biographer’s latest book. Chernow is the recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal, and his first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award. Chernow’s Washington: A Life won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and Alexander Hamilton—the inspiration for the Broadway musical—won the George Washington Book Prize. Ron Chernow has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and is one of only three living biographers to have won the Gold Medal for Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This past president of PEN America was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell.

Podcast #240 – Todd Goddard

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 18:59:00 +0000

Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, A Writer’s Life, is the latest book by this scholar and author, published in November 2025 by Blackstone Publishing. Goddard is an associate professor of literary studies at Utah Valley University, and the Mellon Foundation and a Bordin-Gillette Fellowship from the University of Michigan have funded his work. BIO member and BIO Podcast Producer Jenny Skoog interviewed Goddard.

Note: BIO, the Biographers International Organization’s podcast series, will return on January 9, 2026, with a special episode featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow, whose fascinating books include examinations of Alexander Hamilton, Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington, and his latest biography of Mark Twain.

Podcast #239 – Daniel Brook

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 15:00:37 +0000

The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfield, Visionary of Weimar Berlin, is this journalist and author’s latest book. It was published by W. W. Norton & Company in May 2025. Brook’s writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. One of his previous books, A History of Future Cities, was longlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize and selected as one of the ten favorite books of the year by the Washington Post. To support his research and writing efforts, Brook has received several fellowships, including the Library of Congress’s Kluge Fellowship and BIO’s Robert and Ina Caro Research/Travel Fellowship. Daniel Brook was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Simon Read.

Podcast #238 – Cindy Schweich Handler

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 15:00:20 +0000

This journalist’s biography, A German Jew’s Triumph: Fritz Oppenheimer and the Denazification of Germany, was published by McFarland in April 2025. Handler’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and a host of other national publications. A former editor-in-chief of multiple USA Today Network magazines, she currently writes for the USA Today Network in northern New Jersey, and her features have appeared in The Record newspaper, online at Northjersey.com, and in Gannett-owned newspapers nationwide. The foreword in A German Jew’s Triumph was written by her historian husband, Harry H. Handler. Cindy and Harry Handler were interviewed by BIO member and BIO podcast producer Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #237 – Marion Orr

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 15:00:41 +0000

House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr., is the latest book by this political scientist and the inaugural Frederick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy at Brown University. House of Diggs was published by the University of North Carolina Press in September of this year. An award-winning author, Orr’s publications include Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore and The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics, and the Challenge of Urban Education. He was awarded BIO’s Francis “Frank” Rollin Fellowship to support his work on Congressman Diggs. Marion Orr was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Eric K. Washington.

Podcast #236 – Tim Greiving

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 15:00:02 +0000

John Williams: A Composer’s Life, published by Oxford University Press in September 2025, is the first biography by this arts journalist. Greiving, a longtime fan of Williams’ celebrated film scores, has contributed stories to NPR, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. He has written program notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Royal Albert Hall, and liner notes for more than one hundred soundtrack albums. He also contributes to the Visual History Program for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and teaches film music history at the University of Southern California. Tim Greiving was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Brian Jay Jones.

Podcast #235 – Francesca Wade

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 15:00:54 +0000

Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, published by Scribner in October 2025, is the latest book by London-based author Francesca Wade. Additionally, Wade is the author of Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars, and her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Paris Review, Granta, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, the Leon Levy Center for Biography, and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Wade was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Natalie Dykstra.

Podcast #234 – Todd S. Purdum

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 15:00:09 +0000

Photo by James MacMillan

Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television, published by Simon and Schuster in June 2025, is the latest book by this veteran journalist and author. Purdum also authored Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution and An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In a career spanning more than forty years, Purdum has written extensively about politics and culture, beginning at The New York Times, where he spent twenty-three years, covering politics from city hall to the White House, and later serving as diplomatic correspondent and Los Angeles bureau chief. He has also been a staff writer at Vanity Fair, Politico, and The Atlantic. Todd S. Purdum was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John (Jack) A. Farrell.

Podcast #233 – Dana A. Williams

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 15:00:51 +0000

Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship, the latest book by author Dana A. Williams about Toni Morrison’s significant tenure as an editor at Random House, was published by Amistad in June 2025. Williams is Professor of African American literature and Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. She also authored In the Light of Likeness—Transformed: The Literary Art of Leon Forrest. Williams has edited several books, and her writing has been published in prestigious journals, including PMLA, CLA Journal, African American Review, Early American Literature, American Literary History, and the Langston Hughes Review. Williams was the former president of the College Language Association and the Modern Languages Association, and she currently co-directs the Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice, a Mellon Foundation-funded collaboration between Howard and Georgetown universities. Dana A. Williams was interviewed by fellow Howard University professor, biographer, and BIO member Sonja D. Williams (no relation).

Podcast #232 – James M. Bradley

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 14:00:36 +0000

Martin Van Buren: America’s First Politician is James M. Bradley’s current book. It was published in December 2024 by Oxford University Press. Bradley co-edits the Martin Van Buren Papers, based at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, and he serves as an adjunct instructor in the public history program at the State University of New York at Albany. Bradley also served as the senior project editor of the Encyclopedia of New York City, published by Yale University Press. Fellow biographer and BIO member Simon Read interviewed Bradley.

Podcast #231 – Lindsay M. Chervinsky

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 14:00:24 +0000

This historian and author’s latest book, Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic, was published by Oxford University Press in September 2024. Her other books include the award-winning The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, and the co-edited Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture. Chervinsky currently serves as Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library, and she was a historian at the White House Historical Association. She regularly writes for publications like the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, USA Today, CNN.com, Washington Monthly, and the Washington Post, and is a frequent presidential commentator on national TV and radio. Lindsay M. Chervinsky was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John (Jack) A. Farrell in the Washington Presidential Library.

Podcast #230 – Marcus J. Moore

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 14:00:03 +0000

High and Rising: A Book About De La Soul, published by Dey Street Books in November 2024, is the latest offering by this critically acclaimed author and university professor. Moore’s work explores the intersections of music, race, and culture, and he is the author of The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America. Moore has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, and Rolling Stone, and has penned liner notes and biographies for leading artists across all genres. He also curates and moderates live conversations at major international festivals and has taught courses in music history and cultural criticism, mentoring the next generation of storytellers. Marcus J. Moore was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast #229 – Dan Nadel

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 14:00:26 +0000

This author’s latest book, Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life, examines the life of Robert Crumb, one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. Scribner published Crumb in April 2025, and its author is the Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Whitney Museum of American Art. Nadel’s previous books include It’s Life as I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940–1980; Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence, 1945–1976, and Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900–1969. He is also the founder of PictureBox, a publishing company that produced over 100 books, objects, and magazines from 2000 to 2014, including the Grammy Award–winning design for Wilco’s 2004 album A Ghost Is Born. Dan Nadel was interviewed by fellow biography and BIO member Brian Jay Jones.

Podcast #228 – Alison Owings

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 14:00:53 +0000

Mayor of the Tenderloin: Del Seymour’s Journey from Living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness, is this former broadcast journalist and author’s latest book. It was published by Beacon Press in September 2025, and her previous books include Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich – a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year” and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; Hey, Waitress! The USA from the Other Side of the Tray, and Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans. Alison Owings was interviewed by BIO member and BIO podcast producer Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #227 – Alec Nevala-Lee

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 14:00:11 +0000

This author’s latest book, Collisions: A Physicist’s Journey From Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs, was published by W. W. Norton & Company in June 2025. It explores the life and times of Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Luis W. Alvarez. Nevala-Lee also authored Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller, listed by Esquire as one of the fifty best biographies of all time, and the Hugo Award finalist, Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Alec Nevala-Lee was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast #226 – Mimi Pond

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 14:00:31 +0000

Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me is the award-winning cartoonist, illustrator, and author Mimi Pond’s latest book. Published by Drawn & Quarterly this month, Do Admit is Ponds’ graphic biography of the six famous Mitford sisters of England. Pond’s earlier graphic novel, Over Easy, a fictionalized account of her 1970s waitressing career, was on the New York Times bestseller list and won a PEN Center Award for Graphic Literature, Outstanding Body of Work. Mimi Pond was interviewed by BIO member and Podcast producer Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #225 – Nicholas Boggs

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 14:00:14 +0000

Baldwin: A Love Story, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in August 2025, is author Boggs’s examination of writer James Baldwin — the first major biography of this influential, controversial, and compelling author in three decades. Boggs also rediscovered and co-edited the out-of-print children’s book, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood, Baldwin’s collaboration with French artist Yoran Cazac. Boggs is the recipient of several writing grants, residencies (Yaddo and MacDowell), and fellowships, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Beinecke Library and Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, and the Schomburg Center Scholars-in-Residence Program. Nicholas Boggs was interviewed by BIO member Karolyn van Putten.

Podcast #224 – Eve M. Kahn

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 14:00:03 +0000

This independent scholar and award-winning author’s latest book, Queen of Bohemia Predicts Own Death: Gilded-Age Journalist Zoe Anderson Norris, was published this month by Fordham University Press. It explores the life of reformer and journalist Zoe Anderson Norris, who used her pen prolifically during the late 1800s and early 1900s to advocate for justice for some of New York City’s poorest immigrants. In addition, the 19th-century impressionist painter Mary Rogers Williams was the subject of Kahn’s book, Forever Seeing New Beauties. Eve M. Kahn was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams. (Author photo by Katherine Lanza.)

Podcast #223 – A’Lelia Bundles

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 14:00:19 +0000

Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance is the latest book by this award-winning journalist and author. Published by Scribner this June, it is the first major biography of Bundles’ great-grandmother. Bundles, a Forbes Magazine’s 50 Over 50 Impact honoree, also authored On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, a New York Times Notable Book and bestseller about her great-great-grandmother, an early 20th-century hair care industry entrepreneur and philanthropist. On Her Own Ground inspired Self Made, the fictional four-part 2020 Netflix series starring Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer. Bundles is the founder of the Madam Walker Family Archives, the largest private collection of Walker photographs, memorabilia, and ephemera. Bundles’ essays and articles have appeared in national and international newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, and books. A’Lelia Bundles was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Eric K. Washington.

Podcast #222 – Marc Leepson

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 14:00:54 +0000

This journalist, historian, and Vietnam War veteran is the author of eleven books. His most recent book, The Unlikely War Hero: A Vietnam War POW’s Story of Courage and Resilience in the Hanoi Hilton, was published by Stackpole Press in December 2024. Leepson’s Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler was the first biography of the former Green Beret sergeant who wrote and sang “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” the No. 1 hit song of 1966. A former staff writer for Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C., Leepson has written for many publications as a full-time freelancer, including the Washington Post, New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Smithsonian, Military History, Civil War Times, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. He currently serves as Senior Writer, Arts Editor, and columnist for The VVA Veteran, a magazine published by Vietnam Veterans of America. Marc Leepson was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John A. (Jack) Farrell.

Podcast #221 – Charlotte Jacobs

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 14:00:10 +0000

90 Seconds to Midnight: A Hiroshima Survivor’s Nuclear Odyssey, published by Potomac Books this month, is this author’s biography of Setsuko Nakamura Thurlow—a passionate Japanese individual whose lifelong endeavors helped safeguard mankind. Jacobs is a professor of medicine emerita at Stanford University, where she engaged in cancer research, patient care, and teaching. She is the author of two critically acclaimed books: Jonas Salk: A Life and Henry Kaplan and the Story of Hodgkin’s Disease. Jacobs has been awarded residencies at MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Ragdale Foundation, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Charlotte Jacobs was interviewed by Jenny Skoog, a BIO member and podcast producer.

Podcast #220 – Prathibha Kanakamedala

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 14:00:04 +0000

Brooklynites: The Remarkable Story of the Free Black Communities that Shaped a Borough is this author’s first full-length book. It was published by New York University Press in September 2024. Originally from Liverpool, England, Kanakamedala is a public historian based in New York City. She writes about 19th-century material culture of the Black Atlantic, New York’s racial fluidity and citizenship during that century, and print activism in Brooklyn’s early free Black communities. Prathibha Kanakamedala, a Professor of History at Bronx Community College and a faculty member of the City University of New York Graduate Center, was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Eric K. Washington.

Podcast #219 – Alex Beam

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 30 May 2025 14:00:02 +0000

In Wallace Stegner: Dean of Western Writers, published by Signature Books in February 2025, this longtime Boston Globe columnist and author takes readers on a brisk and riveting journey through Stegner’s life and complicated legacy. As one of the most distinguished chroniclers of the American West, Stegner wrote fourteen novels and seventeen works of nonfiction during a career that spanned half a century. Alex Beam has written two novels and seven works of nonfiction, including two New York Times Notable Books of the Year. In 2014, Beam also authored American Crucifixion, a narrative history of the assassination of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. Alex Beam was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John A. (Jack) Farrell.

Podcast #218 – Adam Plunkett

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 23 May 2025 14:00:39 +0000

Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry is literary critic Adam Plunkett’s first biography. His exploration of the life and creativity of one of America’s favorite 20th-century poets was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in February 2025. Plunkett received fellowship support from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Leon Levy Center for Biography, and he has written for The Poetry Foundation, The Point, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, among others. Adam Plunkett was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Heather Clark.

Podcast #217 – David Levering Lewis

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 16 May 2025 14:00:38 +0000

In this special episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, National Humanities Medal recipient, and New York University history professor emeritus David Levering Lewis discusses his latest book—a sweeping exploration of his own family history. The Stained Glass Window: A Family History as the American Story: 1790-1958 was published by Penguin Random House in February 2025. Lewis received Pulitzers for his W. E. B. Du Bois biographies, and his extraordinary body of work, including 11 books, has been supported by fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Humanities Center, the Wilson Center, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society. In 1999, Lewis was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant. David Levering Lewis was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John A. (Jack) Farrell.

Podcast #216 – Janice Engel

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 09 May 2025 14:00:14 +0000

This award-winning filmmaker, showrunner and Academy of Art University professor, talks about her documentary film, Raise HELL: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019 and won the Audience Award at SXSW, along with numerous other festival awards and screenings in England and Ireland. Raise HELL reflects themes Engel holds dear, speaking truth to power, igniting activism, advocacy and finding our shared humanity. Engel’s work includes non-fiction television specials and films about Jackson Browne and Ted Hawkins, as well as the provocative docuseries, Addicted and the multi-media series, What We Carry, dedicated to preserving Holocaust survivors’ stories. Janice Engel was interviewed by BIO member and podcast producer Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #215 – Caitlin Cass and Lisa Napoli

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 02 May 2025 14:00:23 +0000

These authors talk about a few of the different forms of biography. Caitlin Cass’s graphic book, Suffrage Song: The Haunted History of Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the U.S., was named a Best Art Book of 2024 by Hyperallergic. Since 2009, Cass has self-published a bi-monthly comic periodical called the Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent, and her comics and cartoons have been published in The New Yorker and The Nib. Lisa Napoli worked as a journalist for The New York Times, public radio’s Marketplace, and MSNBC. She has written four books, including a group biography of the four founding mothers of NPR. Lisa Napoli, a long-time member of BIO, is working on her Master’s degree in Biography and Memoir at the CUNY Graduate Center. Cass and Napoli were interviewed by BIO member and podcast producer Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #214 – Steve Paul

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 14:00:32 +0000

Photo: Julie Denesha

As the president of the Biographers International Organization, Steve Paul talks about the organization’s exciting new initiatives in 2025 and beyond. Paul spent more than 40 years in daily journalism and now, as an independent scholar, he is devoted to literary biography. His most recent book, Literary Alchemist: The Writing Life of Evan S. Connell (University of Missouri Press), won the 2022 Society of Midland Authors Award. He also co-edited a collection of scholarly essays on Ernest Hemingway’s early life and writings, and he authored the biography, Hemingway at Eighteen: The Pivotal Year That Launched an American Legend (Chicago Review Press, 2017). Steve Paul was interviewed by BIO member and podcast producer Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #213 – Dawn Porter

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 14:00:45 +0000

Photo: Kevin Scanlon

This celebrated documentary filmmaker is the recipient of the 2025 BIO Award – Biographers International Organization’s annual recognition of a distinguished colleague who has made significant contributions to the art and craft of biography. Dawn Porter’s documentaries include rich biographical explorations of John Lewis, Lady Bird Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy and Luther Vandross. For her impressive body of work, Porter has earned Peabody, NAACP and Gracie Awards, along with the National Humanities Medal, the Critics’ Choice Impact Award and the International Documentary Association’s Career Achievement Award. She will receive this year’s BIO Award and deliver the keynote address at BIO’s annual conference on June 6th at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Dawn Porter talks about her biographical journey with fellow biographer and BIO member A’Lelia Bundles.

Podcast #212 – Carol Sklenicka & Yepoka Yeebo

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 14:00:27 +0000

These celebrated authors talk about BIO’s Plutarch Award for Biography – the organization’s annual recognition of the year’s best biography, as determined by a committee of five distinguished biographers from nominations by BIO members and publishers. First time biographer and British Ghanaian journalist Yepoka Yeebo took home BIO’s 2024 Plutarch Award for her book, Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington and Swindled the World (Bloomsbury, 2023). The book also was shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize, and it was The New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2023. Carol Sklenicka chaired BIO’s 2024 Plutarch Awards committee, and she is the author of Alice Adams: Portrait of a Writer and Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life, both published by Scribner. Sklenicka’s Alice Adams was chosen by The New York Times as one of “Nine Books to Watch for in December” of 2019, while the Times Book Review deemed that her Raymond Carver was one of the “Best 10 Books of 2009.” Sklenicka and Yeebo were interviewed by BIO member and podcast producer Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #211 – Heather Clark & Stephen Enniss

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 14:00:40 +0000

These guests talk about the awards that BIO offers for biographers. Heather Clarks is an author, literary critic and chair of BIO’s awards committee. Her most recent book, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, was one of the New York Times Ten Best Books (2021), and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She has won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, along with Guggenheim, NYPL Cullman Center, NEH Public Scholars, and Leon Levy Biography fellowships. BIO’s 2024 Biblio Award winner and biographer Stephen Enniss, heads the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He has brought scores of archives to the University of Texas, including those of Nobel Laureates Gabriel García Márquez and Kazuo Ishiguro. Enniss is a past recipient of the University of London’s Leverhulme Fellowship and the author of After the Titanic: A Life of Derek Mahon. Heather Clark and Stephen Enniss were interviewed by BIO member and podcast producer Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #210 – Linda Leavell & Natalie Dykstra

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 08:19:21 +0000

These pivotal BIO members share their experience as co-chairs of BIO’s June 5-6, 2025 annual conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Linda Leavell served as BIO’s president from 2019 to 2023, and her biography of American poet Marianne Moore, Holding On Upside Down, won BIO’s Plutarch Award for the best biography of the year, the PEN award for biography, and the Modernist Studies Association book award. With fellow biographer, professor emerita and Massachusetts Historical Society fellow Natalie Dykstra, Leavell co-organized BIO’s inaugural Biography Lab in 2023. Natalie Dykstra’s biography, Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, won a NEH Fellowship and she was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award. For her recent book, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Dykstra received a NEH Public Scholars grant and BIO’s inaugural Robert and Ina Caro Research Fellowship. Linda Leavell and Natalie Dykstra were interviewed by BIO member and podcast producer Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #209 – James McGrath Morris

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 14:00:34 +0000

In this special episode, BIO’s former president and one of the organization’s founders, talks about the history of BIO and its influence. In 2019 McGrath Morris received the BIO Award, annually presented to a writer who has made a major contribution to the advancement of the art and craft of biography. His award-winning books have included Tony Hillerman: A Life; The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and A Friendship Made and Lost in War; Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, The First Lady of the Black Press; Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power; The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism, and, Jailhouse Journalism: The Four Estate Behind Bars. He is also the author of the Kindle Singles Revolution by Murder: Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and the Plot to Kill Henry Clay Frick. and The Radio Operator: Robert Ford’s Last Stand in the Fight to Save Tibet. James “Jamie” McGrath Morris was interviewed by BIO member and podcast producer Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #208 – Ray Anthony Shepard

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 14:00:56 +0000

This award-winning author of biographers for young readers talks about his writing career and his long-term service as a founding BIO board member. His most recent book, A Long Time Coming: A Lyrical Biography of Race in America From Ona Judge to Barack Obama, was published by Calkins Creek in August 2023. Shepard initiated and organized BIO’s exciting forthcoming regional conference, Telling the Stories of Black Lives through Biography. Scheduled for March 21-22, 2025, this conference will be held at Troy University in Montgomery, Alabama, and it will feature a host of speakers, panel discussions, museum tours, and receptions. Ray Anthony Shepard was interviewed by BIO member and podcast producer Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #207 – Jared Stearns

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 15:00:38 +0000

This first-time biographer’s, Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers, explores the untold story of the world’s most famous X-rated star. Chambers rose to fame as the face of Ivory Snow laundry detergent and the star of the X-rated film, Behind the Green Door. Stearns’s book was published by Headpress in May 2024. As a former journalist, Jared Stearns currently serves as the editor of BIO’s newsletters, The Biographer’s Craft and The Insider, and he was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Simon Read.

Podcast #206 – Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 15:00:54 +0000

This scholar and author’s latest book, Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in August 2024. As a queer Black feminist love evangelist, Gumbs has written four earlier books, including Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, which won the 2022 Whiting Award in Non-Fiction. Gumbs is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize in Poetry, the National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and a National Humanities Center Fellowship. She is currently working on her next book in honor of June Jordan and Fannie Lou Hamer. Alexis Pauline Gumbs was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Tamara Payne. Both authors will appear at BIO’s Telling the Stories of Black Lives Through Biography, scheduled for March 21-22, 2025, in Montgomery, Alabama.

Podcast #205 – Mary Frances Phillips

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:00:08 +0000

This historian and author’s Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins, was published in January 2025 by New York University Press. It examines the life and legacy of one of the longest-serving women members of the Black Panther Party. Huggins also is an educator, poet, mother, and a former political prisoner. As a first-time biographer, Mary Phillips serves as an associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has published several scholarly journal articles, and her essays have appeared in the Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine’s blog, New Black Man (in Exile), Colorlines, Vibe Magazine, and the Black Youth Project. Mary Frances Phillips was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast #204 – Cheryl Janifer LaRoche

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 15:00:26 +0000

This award-winning archaeologist, author and scholar talks about her latest book, Apostle of Liberation: AME Bishop Paul Quinn and the Underground Railroad. Published by Rowman and Littlefield this month, this biography explores the life of a larger-than-life leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church – a man who actively supported the education of enslaved Black Americans and their freedom struggles during and after slavery. LaRoche also authored Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance, and she is an associate research professor in Historic Preservation in the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the University of Maryland. Cheryl LaRoche was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast #203 – Samantha Ege

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 15:00:35 +0000

This award-winning musicologist, internationally recognized concert pianist, and London-based popular public speaker talks about her first book, South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene, published by the University of Illinois Press in November 2024. Ege is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, and she is a leading scholar of African American composer Florence B. Price within the context of the Black Chicago Renaissance (1930-1950) and Black women’s dynamic networks of advocacy, empowerment, and uplift. In 2018, Ege released her debut album, Four Women, featuring the music of pioneering women composers Price, Margaret Bonds, Carol Kapralova, and Ethel Bilsland, and she has released several critically acclaimed albums since then. Samantha Ege was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast #202 – Diane Kiesel

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 15:00:21 +0000

Author, professor and retired New York Supreme Court judge, Diane Kiesel, talks about her latest book, When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law. It is set to be published in February 2025 by the University of Michigan Press. While serving as a judge, Kiesel continued her career as a writer of non-fiction that began years before when she was a journalist in Washington, D.C. where she reported on Congress and the Supreme Court for several California newspapers. Kiesel has authored two editions of a textbook on domestic violence law, and an award-winning biography of Dr. Dorothy Boulding, a civil rights pioneer. Diane Kiesel was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Debby Applegate.

Podcast #201 – Mark Clifford

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 17:07:13 +0000

This author’s biography, The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic, was published by Simon & Schuster in December 2024. Clifford is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, and he served as the executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council and as a board director at Next Digital, the Hong Kong media giant founded and majority-owned by Jimmy Lai. During Clifford’s nearly three decades in Hong Kong, he was the editor-in-chief of two English-language newspapers and won numerous journalism, academic, and book awards. His previous book was Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China’s Crackdown Reveals About Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere. Mark Clifford was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast 200 – Max Boot

Biographers International Organization — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 02:52:14 +0000

This historian, best-selling author and foreign-policy analyst talks about his latest book, Reagan: His Life and Legend. Published by Liveright in September 2024, this biography was recognized as one of the Ten Best Books of this year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post and the Economist. Boot’s previous biography, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, also was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Boot has served as a foreign policy adviser to the presidential campaigns of John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Marco Rubio, and he has contributed regularly several publications, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy and The New York Times. Now serving as a senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Max Boot was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

Podcast #199 – Kai Bird

Biographers International Organization — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:50:21 +0000

This journalist’s co-authored and Pulitzer Prize winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, served as the inspiration for the Oscar winning film, Oppenheimer. Bird has written several critically acclaimed biographies, including The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms; The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment; The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames; and The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter. Bird currently serves as the Executive Director and Distinguished Lecturer at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Leon Levy Center for Biography in New York City. Presently, he is working on a biography of lawyer Roy Cohn. Kai Bird was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

Podcast #198 – Pamela D. Toler

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 16:13:45 +0000

Historian and author Pamela D. Toler’s latest book, The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany, was published in August 2024 by Beacon Press. In addition to this biography of Sigrid Schultz, the fearless woman who headed the Chicago Tribune’s Berlin bureau from 1925 to 1941, Toler has authored ten books of popular history for children and adults, including Heroines of Mercy Street: Real Nurses of the Civil War and Women Warriors: An Unexpected History. Toler’s work has appeared in American Scholar, Aramco World, Calliope, History Channel Magazine, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Ms., Time.com, The Washington Post and the National Geographic. Pamela D. Toler was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast #197 – David Greenberg

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 14:30:10 +0000

This veteran author and Rutgers University journalism professor speaks with BIO member Kevin McGruder about his latest book, John Lewis: A Life. It was published by Simon and Schuster in October 2024 and supported by grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography. Greenberg’s previous books include Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image and Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency. Formerly acting editor of The New Republic and a columnist for Slate, Greenberg now writes regularly for Politico, Liberties, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. His work has also been featured in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous academic journals.

Podcast #196 – Carl Rollyson

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 14:49:02 +0000

Veteran biographer and emeritus Baruch College journalism professor Carl Rollyson talks about his latest book, Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volume 2, published by the University Press of Mississippi in August 2024. Rollyson’s impressive literary output—of more than 40 books—includes examinations of William Faulkner, Amy Lowell, Walter Brennan, Lillian Hellman, Norman Mailer and Marilyn Monroe. He also coauthored Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated. Rollyson’s reviews of biographies have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and New Criterion, and he writes a twice weekly column on biography for the New York Sun. Carl Rollyson was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell.

Podcast #195 – Heath Hardage Lee

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 11:24:14 +0000

Award-winning historian, curator and biographer, Heath Hardage Lee, talks about her latest book, The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady. It was published by St. Martin’s Press in August 2024. Lee’s work has been featured on the Today Show, C-Span, and on the Smithsonian Channel’s America’s Hidden Stories. She also writes about history and politics for publications such as Time, The Hill, The Atlantic and White House History Quarterly, and her second book, The League of Wives, is being developed into a television series. Heath Hardage Lee was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell.

Podcast #194 – Ken Burns

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 14:23:30 +0000

Celebrated documentary filmmaker and Television Hall of Fame inductee Ken Burns, talks about his latest film, Leonardo da Vinci. It will air nationwide on PBS network stations on November 18 and 19, 2024. Burns has directed and produced such acclaimed historical documentaries as, The Civil War; Baseball; Jazz; The War; The National Parks: America’s Best Idea; Prohibition, The Vietnam War; Country Music; The U.S. and the Holocaust and The American Buffalo. Burns’ biographical documentaries include The Roosevelts: An Intimate History; Muhammad Ali; Benjamin Franklin; Jackie Robinson and Hemmingway. Burn’s films have earned dozens of major awards, including seventeen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations. Additionally, he earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Ken Burns was interviewed by BIO member John A. Farrell.

Photo credit: Stephanie Berger.

Podcast #193 – Susan Blumberg-Kason

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 14:08:00 +0000

Author Susan Blumberg-Kason talks about her latest book, Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China, published by Post Hill Press in November 2023. Blumberg-Kason has also authored Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong and she co-edited the book Hong Kong Noir. Blumberg-Kason is a regular contributor to the Asian Review of Books and World Literature Today, and her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, PopMatters, and the South China Morning Post. She is currently working on a biography of Golda Meir. Susan Blumberg-Kason was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #192 – Benjamin Taylor

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 13:11:05 +0000

This week we interview Benjamin Taylor, author of Chasing Bright Medusas: The Life of Willa Cather. This biography of Cather, a celebrated American novelist, was published in November 2023 by Viking. In 2021, Taylor received an award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. One of his previous memoirs, The Hue and Cry at Our House, received the 2018 Los Angeles Times/Christopher Isherwood Prize, and it was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Taylor’s Proust: The Search was named a Best Book of 2016 by Thomas Mallon in The New York Times Book Review and by Robert McCrum in The Observer (London). Taylor is a past fellow and current trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and he serves as president of the Edward F. Albee Foundation. Benjamin Taylor was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina.

Podcast #191 – Patti Hartigan

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 12:24:10 +0000

This week we interview Patti Hartigan, award-winning journalist and author of August Wilson: A Life. This biography, Hartigan’s first, about the legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who powerfully and poetically chronicled African American life in the 20th century, was published in August 2023 by Simon & Schuster. Hartigan has had a long career at the Boston Globe where she served as arts reporter, drama critic, and cultural columnist. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times and American Theatre. Patti Hartigan was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast #190 – Fergus M. Bordewich

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 12:41:57 +0000

This week we interview veteran independent writer, historian, and journalist, Fergus M. Bordewich. His latest book, Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction, was published in October 2023 by Knopf. Bordewich has written eight previous nonfiction books, including the award-winning The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government, and America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union. Bordewich’s Bound for Canaan, about the Underground Railroad, was named one of the New York Public Library’s ten best books of 2005, and he edited a landmark photojournalistic account of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, in Beijing. Bordewich’s articles have appeared in many national magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, Smithsonian, and American Heritage. Fergus M. Bordewich was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell.

Podcast #189 – Katie Gee Salisbury

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 11:55:15 +0000

This week we interview Katie Gee Salisbury, author of Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong, a new biography of the first Asian American movie star. This biography was published by Dutton in March 2024. Gee Salisbury’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Believer, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in 2021 and she gave the TED Talk, “As American as Chop Suey.” Gee Salisbury also writes the newsletter Half-Caste Woman. A fifth-generation Chinese American who hails from Southern California, she now lives in Brooklyn. Katie Gee Salisbury was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #188 – Kenneth Miller

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 11:26:41 +0000

This week we interview award-winning journalist and author Kenneth Miller about his first biography, Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep. It was published in October 2023 by Hachette Books. Miller is a contributing editor for Discover, and his work has appeared in Time, Life, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Aeon, and many other publications. Miller’s honors include the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, the ASJA Outstanding Article Award for science writing, and the June Roth Memorial Award for medical writing. Kenneth Miller was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast #187 – Jessica Max Stein

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 13:23:51 +0000

This week we interview Jessica (Max) Stein, author of Funny Boy: The Richard Hunt Biography. This first-time biography of a highly regarded Muppet/Sesame Street performer was published in March 2024 by Rutgers University Press. Stein is New York-based writer who teaches writing and literature at the City University of New York. Biographers International Organization honored Stein’s Funny Boy book proposal as one of three finalists for its 2016 Hazel Rowley Prize. Stein’s writing has been cited in The New York Times, and she received an Amy Award for young writers from Poets and Writers magazine, and an Ippie Award for Best Editorial from the Independent Press Association. A reporter and former editor of The Indypendent, Stein has published work in over 100 magazines and journals, including a longtime column at The Bilerico Project. Jessica (Max) Stein was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Brian Jay Jones.

Podcast #186 – Matthew Kennedy

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 13:37:30 +0000

This week film historian Matthew Kennedy talks about his latest book, On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide, published by Oxford University Press in May 2024. Kennedy also authored Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s, and he has written biographies of actresses Marie Dressler and Joan Blondell, and of director/screenwriter Edmund Goulding. Kennedy has introduced film series at the Museum of Modern Art, UCLA Film & Television Archive, and Pacific Film Archive, and written for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Turner Classic Movies, and the National Film Registry. He is currently host and curator of the CinemaLit series at the Mechanics’ Institute Library in San Francisco. Matthew Kennedy was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Debby Applegate.

Podcast #185 – Rachel Kousser

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 11:53:32 +0000

This week we interview City University of New York (CUNY) professor and author Rachel Kousser. Her latest book, Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great, was published in July 2024 by Mariner Books. Kousser heads the Classics Department in CUNY’s Graduate Center and serves as a professor of ancient art and archaeology at Brooklyn College. One of her previous books, The Afterlives of Greek Sculpture: Interaction, Transformation, Destruction, received an Archaeological Institute of America Publication Subvention Award and was shortlisted for the Runciman Book Award for a book on Greek history or culture. Kousser has received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Getty Research Institute, and the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts. Rachel Kousser was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #184 – Will Hermes

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 18:13:41 +0000

This time we interview author Will Hermes, whose latest book, Lou Reed: The King of New York, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in October 2023. Hermes is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and a longtime contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered and The New York Times. He also is the author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, he writes for Pitchfork and other publications, and he co-edited SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music. Will Hermes was interviewed in New York City at BIO’s May 2024 annual conference by fellow biographer and BIO member Laurie Gwen Shapiro.

Image credit: Forrest Scholl

Podcast #183 – Amrita Chakrabarti Myers

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 12:37:06 +0000

This week we interview Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, an award-winning author and the Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor of history and gender studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. Her latest book, The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in October 2023. Myers also is the author of Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers was interviewed in New York City at BIO’s 2024 annual conference by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #182 – Brad Gooch

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 12:23:53 +0000

This week we interview poet, novelist, and biographer Brad Gooch. His latest book, Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring, was published by Harper/HarperCollins in March 2024. Gooch’s previous ten books include Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor—a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a New York Times bestseller—and City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara. Brad Gooch is the recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim fellowships, and he was interviewed in New York City at BIO’s 2024 annual conference by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #181 – Marsha Gordon

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 13:26:05 +0000

This week we interview Marsha Gordon, author, professor, and director of Film Studies at North Carolina State University. Gordon’s latest book, Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life & Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott, was published by the University of California Press in April 2023. Gordon is a former National Humanities Center Fellow and an NEH Public Scholar. Her other books include Film is Like a Battleground: Sam Fuller’s War Movies, and Hollywood Ambitions: Celebrity in the Movie Age. Gordon has co-directed three documentary shorts, and she recently received a 2024 Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship to work on her newest documentary about the visual artist Alexander Bogardy. Marsha Gordon was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Debby Applegate.

Podcast #180 – Adam Nagourney

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 31 May 2024 12:41:35 +0000

This week we interview Adam Nagourney, veteran journalist and author of, The Times: How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn and the Transformation of Journalism, published by Crown Press in September 2023. After being hired by the New York Times in 1996, Nagourney served as the paper’s metropolitan political correspondent, chief national political correspondent, Los Angeles bureau chief, and West Coast culture reporter, returning to cover national politics in 2023. Before joining the Times, he worked at USA Today, The New York Daily News, and the Gannett Westchester Newspapers. Adam Nagourney was interviewed by BIO member and fellow biographer Lisa Napoli.

Podcast #179 – Barbara D. Savage

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 24 May 2024 13:20:08 +0000

This week we interview award-winning author and first-time biographer, Barbara D. Savage. Her latest book, Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar, is an incisive examination of a scholar who thrived despite steep obstacles, taking her from a farm in the Midwest to Kalamazoo to London and to the world beyond. Merze Tate was published by Yale University Press in November 2023. Savage is a historian and the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania. Her other works include Your Spirits Walk Beside Us, winner of the 2012 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Barbara D. Savage was interviewed by BIO member and fellow biographer A’Lelia Bundles.

Podcast #178 – Judith Tick

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 17 May 2024 06:01:50 +0000

This week we interview Judith Tick, a Matthews Distinguished Professor Emerita at Northeastern University in Boston, and an award-winning author. Her latest book, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song, explores the life of one of the 20th century’s greatest jazz vocalists. It was published by W. W. Norton and Company in January of this year. In addition, Tick’s co-edited anthology (with Jane Bowers), Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, was a pioneering text for the study of gender and women’s history in music. In 2013 the Society for American Music established a fellowship in Tick’s name. Judith Tick was interviewed by BIO member and fellow biographer Sonja Williams.

Podcast #177 – Hampton Sides

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 10 May 2024 13:19:28 +0000

This week we interview celebrated author Hampton Sides. His latest book, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, was published by Doubleday in April 2024. Sides is known for his gripping nonfiction adventure stories set in war or depicting epic expeditions of exploration. His bestselling narratives include, Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound On His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice, and On Desperate Ground. Sides has been a contributor to many national newspapers and magazines, and his journalistic work, collected in numerous published anthologies, has been twice nominated for National Magazine Awards for feature writing. He is a board member of the Society of American Historians and the Author’s Guild, and he was a recent Miller Distinguished Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute. Hampton Sides was interviewed by BIO member and fellow biographer Jamie McGrath Morris.

Podcast #176 – Scott Shane

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 03 May 2024 15:30:16 +0000

This week we interview Scott Shane, author of Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery’s Borderland. Published by Celadon Press in September 2023, Shane has written a riveting account of the life of Thomas Smallwood–the formerly enslaved man credited with naming the Underground Railroad. Shane is a veteran reporter for The Baltimore Sun and The New York Times, where he was twice a member of teams that won Pulitzer Prizes. His two previous books are Dismantling Utopia, a firsthand account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Objective Troy, the story of an American terrorist killed in a drone strike on orders of President Obama. In 2019-2020 he was a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where he has taught courses on media and about the Russian attack on the 2016 American presidential election. Scott Shane was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #175 – Cynthia Carr

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 12:34:35 +0000

This week we interview award winning author Cynthia Carr, whose latest book, Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar, was published by Farrar Straus and Giroux in March 2024. Carr’s previous biographies include, Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz – a Lambda Literary Award winner and finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize – along with Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America, and On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century. Cynthia Carr was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #174 – Larry Rohter

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 12:37:54 +0000

This week we interview journalist Larry Rohter, author of the biography about a brilliant Brazilian explorer. Rohter’s Into the Amazon: The Life of Cândido Rondon, Trailblazing Explorer, Scientist, Statesman, and Conservationist, was published by W. W. Norton and Company in May 2023. Rohter served as the Rio de Janeiro bureau chief for the New York Times from 1998 to 2008, and he held the same role at Newsweek from 1977 to 1982. He divides his time between the United States and Brazil. Larry Rohter was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast #173 – Danny Fingeroth

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 13:51:06 +0000

This week we interview Danny Fingeroth, a veteran biographer and cultural historian/commentator who specializes in history at the intersection of Jewish and American cultures. His latest book, Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald’s Assassin, was published in November 2023 by Chicago Review Press. Fingeroth made his mark as a cultural observer with books like Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society and Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero. His acclaimed 2019 biography of Stan Lee, A Marvelous Life, examines this innovative Jewish-American figure—the co-creator of Marvel Comics. Danny Fingeroth was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast #172 – Jack Kelly

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 11:15:32 +0000

This week we interview Jack Kelly, an award-winning author and historian. Kelly’s latest book, God Save Benedict Arnold: The True Story of America’s Most Hated Man, was published in December 2023 by St. Martin’s Press. Kelly’s previous fiction and nonfiction books were well received, including his Band of Giants: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America’s Independence, which received the DAR History Medal. Kelly is a New York Foundation for the Arts nonfiction literature fellow, and he has appeared on the History Channel, National Public Radio, and C-Span. Jack Kelly was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell.

Podcast #171 – Joy-Ann Reid

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 12:43:14 +0000

This week we interview Joy-Ann Reid, host of MSNBC’s The Reid Out and a New York Times bestselling author. Reid’s latest book, Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America, was published by Mariner Books in February of this year. Her previous books include the bestseller The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story. Reid served as the former managing editor of The Grio, and her columns have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Miami Herald, New York, and The Daily Beast. Joy-Ann Reid was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Tamara Payne.

Joy-Ann Reid

Podcast #170 – Natalie Dykstra

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 10:53:21 +0000

This week we interview award-winning author Natalie Dykstra. Her latest biography, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, will be published by Mariner on March 26, 2024. Dykstra’s work on Stewart Gardner has won a Public Scholars Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities and an inaugural Robert and Ina Caro Research/Travel Fellowship sponsored by the Biographers International Organization. Dykstra, an emerita professor of English at Hope College in Michigan, lives with her husband in Waltham, MA. Natalie Dykstra was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #169 – Nicholas L. Syrett

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 10:00:39 +0000

This week we interview Nicholas L. Syrett, the author of four books and most recently, The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime, published by The New Press in October 2023. As an associate dean and professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas, Syrett also is the co-editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality. Nicholas Syrett was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #168 – J. C. Hallman

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 13:31:55 +0000

This week we interview J. C. Hallman, author of Say Anarcha: A Young Woman, a Devious Surgeon, and the Harrowing Birth of Modern Women’s Health, published by Henry Holt and Company in June 2023. Hallman’s previous work on Anarcha has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Forum (of the African American Policy Forum), the Baffler, Montgomery Advertiser, and Urology. Hallman also has published five previous works of nonfiction and a book of short stories. In the general nonfiction category, Hallman is the recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. J.C. Hallman was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #167 – Rachel Shteir

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 14:51:48 +0000

This week we interview author and theater arts professor Rachel Shteir, whose latest book, Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disruptor, was published by Yale University Press in September 2023. Friedan was the trendsetting feminist writer and activist. Shteir has written three precious books, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show; Gypsy: the Art of the Tease; and The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting, along with many essays and articles, and she was the founder of the Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism Program at the Theatre School at DePaul University. Rachel Shteir was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #166 – Doug Melville

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 09:00:03 +0000

This week we interview author Doug Melville, whose first biography, Invisible Generals: Rediscovering Family Legacy and a Quest to Honor America’s First Black Generals, was published by Atria/Black Privilege Press in November 2023. Invisible Generals explores the lives of Generals Benjamin O. Davis, Senior and Junior, a father and son who helped integrate the American military and created the Tuskegee Airmen. Melville is a global head of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the international luxury industry, and his family has worked under ten different American presidential administrations. Melville has delivered three TEDx Talks, and he has been featured in numerous periodicals, including Forbes, USA TODAY, The Washington Post, Time, and more. Doug Melville was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast #165 – Rachel Jamison Webster

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 14:30:37 +0000

This week we interview Rachel Jamison Webster, professor of creative writing at Northwestern University and the author of four books of poetry and cross-genre writing. Her latest book, Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family, was published by Henry Holt and Company in March 2023. Webster has taught writing workshops through the National Urban League, Chicago Public Schools, Gallery 37, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art, working to bring diversity and antiracist awareness into creative writing curricula. Rachel’s essays, poems, and stories have been published in Poetry, Tin House, and the Yale Review. Rachel Jamison Webster was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Tamara Payne.

Podcast #164 – David Waldstreicher

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 14:49:45 +0000

This week we interview David Waldstreicher, a history professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center and author of his latest book, The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: a Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence, published by Farrar Strauss and Grioux in March 2023. Waldstreicher’s other books includer Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification, and Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution. He also has written for The New York Times Book Review, Boston Review, and The Atlantic, among other publications. David Waldstreicher was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina.

Podcast #163 – Tanisha C. Ford

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 13:00:05 +0000

This week we interview Tanisha C. Ford, a cultural critic, educator, and author. Her latest book, Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon, and the Glamour, Money and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement, was published by Amistad in October 2023. Ford has written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, Time, the Root, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and she’s been featured on NPR, among other places. She was named to the Root’s list of the 100 Most influential African Americans. Ford is also the author of Dressed in Dreams, Kwame Brathwaite: Black is Beautiful, and Liberated Threads, which won the 2016 Organization of American Historians’ Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for the best book on civil rights history. In addition, she serves as a professor of history at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Tanisha C. Ford was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member A’Lelia Bundles.

Podcast #162 – Dean King

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 10:00:21 +0000

This week we interview Dean King whose latest book, Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship that Saved Yosemite, was published by Scribner in March 2023. King is an award-winning author of ten nonfiction books including Skeletons on the Zahara, Unbound, Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed, and The Feud. His writing has appeared in Granta, Garden & Gun, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, the New York magazine, and The New York Times. He is the chief storyteller in two History Channel documentaries and a producer of its series, Hatfields & McCoys: White Lightning. King has appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, ABC’s World News Tonight, PBS’s American Experience, BBC Radio, Arte TV France/Germany, and at TEDx. Dean King was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Brian Jay Jones.

Podcast #161 – Brad Snyder

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 10:00:15 +0000

This week we interview Brad Snyder, author of Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment, published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2022. As a Georgetown University law professor, Snyder teaches constitutional law, constitutional history, and sports law. He was a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in constitutional studies, and he is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Supreme Court History. Snyder has written three previous books including The House of Truth: A Washington Political Salon and the Foundations of American Liberalism (2017) and A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports (2006). Brad Snyder was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #160 – Yunte Huang

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 10:00:15 +0000

This week we interview Yunte Huang, a Guggenheim Fellow and author of Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History, published by Liveright in August 2023. Huang has taught at Harvard University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a professor of English. He also is the author of Inseparable and the Edgar Award–winning biography Charlie Chan. Both of those books were National Book Critics Circle Award finalists. Huang speaks frequently about American popular culture. For this episode, Yunte Huang was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #159 – Walter Isaacson

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 21:53:05 +0000

Happy New Year! This special episode features a fascinating presentation by the 2023 National Humanities Awardee, Tulane University history professor, television and podcast host, and celebrated biographer, Walter Issacson. His September 28, 2023, “Lessons About Living with Genius,” lecture was presented at the Leon Levy Center for Biography in the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in Manhattan. Issacson’s latest book, Elon Musk, was published in September of last year by Simon and Schuster. His previous books include, The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race (2021), Leonardo do Vinci (2017), The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014), Steve Jobs (2011), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), Kissinger: A Biography (1992), and the co-written, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986).

Podcast #158 – Justin Martin

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 13:41:21 +0000

This week, we interview author Justin Martin, who specializes in meticulously researched and engagingly delivered American history books. His most recent, A Fierce Glory: Antietam, the Desperate Battle That Saved Lincoln and Doomed Slavery, was published by Da Capo Press in September 2018. This group biography is about Antietam—a turning point in the Civil War—in which Martin emphasizes character development over troop movements and portrays key figures both on and off the battlefield on that fateful day: Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and Clara Barton. Martin was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast #157 – Maryemma Graham

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 14:11:43 +0000

This week, we interview Maryemma Graham, author of the first comprehensive biography of famed poet, writer, and educator Margaret Walker. The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker was published by Oxford University Press in December 2022. A Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Kansas and Founding Director of the History of Black Writing at the University of Mississippi, Graham has published 12 books, including The Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel and, with Jerry W. Ward, The Cambridge History of African American Literature. Maryemma Graham was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast #156 – Beverly Gage

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 13:04:59 +0000

This week, we interview Beverly Gage, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, published by Viking in November 2022. Gage is professor of 20th-century American history at Yale and in her previous book, The Day Wall Street Exploded (Oxford University Press, 2009), she examined the history of terrorism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Gage writes frequently for the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, among other publications. Gage was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #155 – Satvinder Juss

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 13:08:21 +0000

This week we interview Satvinder Juss, author of Bhagat Singh: A Life in Revolution, a biography of a charismatic Indian revolutionary, published by India Viking in December 2022. Juss serves as Professor of Law at King’s College, London; is a practicing Barrister-at-Law in London; and is a Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal in London and Birmingham, UK. He was a former Human Rights Fellow at Harvard Law School. Juss was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast #154 – Rachel L. Swarns

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 13:30:28 +0000

This week we interview Rachel L. Swarns, a New York University Professor of Journalism and journalist who writes about race and race relations as a contributing author to The New York Times. Her latest book, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the Catholic Church, was published by Random House in May 2023. She also authored American Tapestry: The Story of the Black and White and Multicultural Ancestors of Michelle Obama and co-authored Unseen: Unpublished Black History from the New York Times Photo Archive. Swarns’s work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Leon Levy Center for Biography, Biographers International Organization, and other organizations. Swarns was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Eric K. Washington.

Podcast #153 – Edward O’Shea

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 10:03:13 +0000

This week we interview Edward O’Shea, a State University of New York at Oswego Emeritus English Professor and author of Seamus Heaney’s American Odyssey. Published by Routledge Press in December 2022, this biography explores the 40 years that Irish poet Seamus Heaney spent in America. O’Shea has served as a Fulbright Fellow at Presidency College in Kolkata, India, and he was a Fulbright Specialist at Trinity College in Dublin. During that appointment, he made presentations at the Heaney “Listen Now Again” exhibition in Dublin, and at Trinity College, Queens University in Belfast. Edward O’Shea was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

Podcast #152 – Mary Ann Caws

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 10:03:31 +0000

This week we interview Mary Ann Caws, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature, English and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. In her latest book, Mina Loy: Apology of Genius, published by Reaktion Books in July 2022, Caws explores Loy’s flamboyant life and avant-garde artistry. Caws has authored several books, including The Modern Art Cookbook and Creative Gatherings: Meeting Places of Modernism, both published by Reaktion Books. Mary Ann Caws was intervened by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast #151 – Thomas Hertog

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 10:03:56 +0000

This week we interview the internationally renowned cosmologist Thomas Hertog, who for many years was a close collaborator and mentee of the late Stephen Hawking. His book, On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory, was published by Bantam in April 2023. Hertog currently serves as professor of theoretical physics at Belgium’s University of Leuven, where he studies the quantum nature of the big bang. Thomas Hertog was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

Podcast #150 – Ilyon Woo

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 12:44:49 +0000

This week we interview Ilyon Woo, the New York Times best-selling author of Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, published by Simon & Schuster in January 2023. This biography details the story of Ellen and William Craft who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise. Woo also authored The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times, and her articles have appeared in publications such as the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal, and she has received support for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other organizations. Ilyon Woo was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

Podcast #149 – Caleb Gayle

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 09:00:11 +0000

This week we feature award-winning journalist and author Caleb Gayle, who writes about the history of race and identity. His latest book, We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity and Power (Riverhead Books, June 2023), is about Black members of the indigenous Creek Nation. It was awarded the Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award. Gayle’s writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Guernica, The New Republic, The Boston Globe, and many other publications. He serves as senior fellow at Northeastern University’s Burnes Center for Social Change and holds fellowships from New America, PEN America, and Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Gayle will be interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast #148 – Paul Fisher

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 09:00:38 +0000

This week we feature biographer and cultural historian Paul Fisher. His most recent award-winning biography, The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in November 2022. Fisher currently serves as an American Studies Professor at Wellesley College; he has also taught at Yale, Wesleyan, Boston University, and Harvard. His group biography, House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family (Henry Holt and Co., 2008) was designated a Spectator book of 2008. Fisher was interviewed by BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

Wellesley Magazine, Winter 2023, Paul Fisher, April 5, 2022

Podcast #147 – Angela V. John

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 09:00:39 +0000

This week we feature Angela V. John, an historian and biographer from Wales who serves as the president of Llafur, the Welsh People’s History Society. Her latest book, War, Journalism, and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century: The Life and Times of Henry W. Nevinson, was published by Bloomsbury in February of this year. It examines the life of a journalist who has been called the “king” of correspondents. John has served as a history professor at the University of Greenwich in London and is currently an honorary professor at Swansea University. She has published a dozen books; her biographical subjects include the Welsh feminist Lady Rhondda and the American-born actor, writer, and suffragette Elizabeth Robins. John was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast #146 – Jonathan Eig

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 09:00:51 +0000

This week we feature Jonathan Eig, former senior writer for The Wall Street Journal and the author of a new biography of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—King: A Life (Farrar Straus and Giroux, May 2023). Eig is a New York Times bestselling author of five previous books including: Ali: A Life (Mariner Books, 2017); Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig (Simon & Schuster, 2005); and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season (Simon & Schuster, 2007). Ken Burns has praised Eig as “a master storyteller.” His books have been listed among the best of the year by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Sports Illustrated, and Slate. Eig was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast #145 – Kerri K. Greenidge

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 09:00:30 +0000

This week we interview Kerri K. Greenidge, the Mellon Assistant Professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University. The author most recently of The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in An American Family (Liveright, November 2022), Greenidge also wrote Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter (Liveright, 2019), one of The New York Times’ top picks of 2019. She is also the recipient of the Mark Lynton Prize in History, Massachusetts Book Award, J. Anthony Lukas Award, Fordham University’s Sperber Award, and the Peter J. Gomes Book Prize from the Massachusetts Historical Society. Her writing has appeared in the Massachusetts Historical Review, Radical History Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. Greenidge is interviewed by BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

Podcast #144 – Celia Stahr

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 09:00:06 +0000

This week we interview Celia Stahr, author of Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist (St. Martin’s Press, March 2020). This biography of celebrated Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s formative time during the early 1930s in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York, received many positive reviews in publications such as The New York Times, Art in America, and Booklist. Stahr teaches art history at the University of San Francisco, where she specializes in modern, contemporary, and African art. She is particularly interested in artists who cross cultural boundaries. Stahr will be interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast #143 – Jonny Steinberg

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 15:13:04 +0000

This week we interview Jonny Steinberg, author of Winnie and Nelson Mandela: Portrait of a Marriage, published by Knopf in May 2023. Steinberg has written several books about everyday life in the wake of South Africa’s transition to democracy, and he is a two-time winner of South Africa’s premier nonfiction award and an inaugural winner of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prize. Steinberg served as professor of African Studies at Oxford University and currently he teaches part-time at Yale and at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg. Jonny Steinberg was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast #142 – Sung-Yoon Lee

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 10:47:23 +0000

This week we interview Sung-Yoon Lee, author of The Sister: The Extraordinary Story of Kim Yo Jong, the Most Powerful Woman in North Korea, published in America by Public Affairs in September of this year. A fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Lee has taught Korean history at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. Sung-Yoon Lee is interviewed by BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

Podcast #141 – Jennifer Homans and Pamela Newkirk

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 11:45:49 +0000

This special episode features a spirited conversation between award-winning journalist and biographer Pamela Newkirk and BIO’s 2023 Plutarch Award-winner Jennifer Homans. The Plutarch Award recognizes the best biography of the year, as determined by a BIO committee of distinguished biographers. Homans earned this honor for her latest book, Mr. B.: Balanchine’s 20th Century (Random House, November 2022). Homans is the dance critic for The New Yorker, a Scholar-in-Residence at New York University, and the founding director of NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts. This edited discussion was recorded on November 29, 2022, in the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. We are pleased to present this discussion with the Levy Center’s permission.

Podcast #140 – Jeff Pearlman

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 12:35:01 +0000

This week we interview sports journalist and author Jeff Pearlman. His latest book, The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, was published in October 2022 by Mariner Books. Pearlman has also written eight New York Times best-selling books, including Football for a Buck, The Bad Guys Won!, Boys Will Be Boys, Showtime, Sweetness, and Gunslinger. He is the host of the Two Writers Slinging Yang podcast and he blogs regularly at jeffpearlman.com. Jeff Pearlman was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast #139 – E. James West

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 14:03:30 +0000

This week we interview E. James West, a historian and lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies and Cultures at England’s University College of London. He also serves as co-director of the Black Press Research Collective based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. West has authored three books, most recently Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr., published in July 2022 as a part of the African American Intellectual History series from the University of Massachusetts Press. His research focuses on the Black press in the United States, as well as race, media and social rights issues across the Black diaspora. E. James West was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast #138 – Candice Millard Part 2

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 13:19:19 +0000

This week we present the second half of our special two-part interview with Candice Millard, author of four New York Times bestsellers. Her most recent book, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, was published by Doubleday in May of 2022. Her previous books include The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, and Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime, the PEN Center USA award for Research Nonfiction, the One Book-One Lincoln Award, the Ohioana Award, and the Kansas Notable Book Award. Millard took home the 2017 BIO Award, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, the Guardian, National Geographic and Time magazine. Candice Millard was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” A. Farrell.

Podcast #137 – Candice Millard Part 1

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 14:18:25 +0000

This week we present the first segment of a special two-part interview with Candice Millard, author of four New York Times bestsellers. Her most recent book, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, was published by in May 2022 by Doubleday. Her previous books include The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, and Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime, the PEN Center USA award for Research Nonfiction, the One Book-One Lincoln Award, the Ohioana Award, and the Kansas Notable Book Award. Millard took home the 2017 BIO Award, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, the Guardian, National Geographic and Time magazine. Candice Millard was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” A. Farrell.

Podcast #136 – Aidan Levy

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 07:01:33 +0000

This week we interview Aidan Levy whose latest book, Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins, was published in December 2022 by Hachette Books. Levy also authored, Dirty Blvd.: The Life and Music of Lou Reed, and he edited Patti Smith on Patti Smith: Interviews and Encounters. A former Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellow, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, JazzTimes, and The Nation.  Aiden Levy was interviewed by BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

Podcast #135 – Chad Williams

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 26 May 2023 08:00:39 +0000

This week we interview Chad Williams, the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University. His latest book, The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War, was published in April 2023 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Williams specializes in African American and modern US History, African American military history, the World War I era and African American intellectual history. Also, he authored the award-winning book, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era, and co-editor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism and Racial Violence and Major Problems in African American History, Second Edition. Chad Williams was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams (no relation).

Podcast #134 – Stacy Schiff Part 2

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 19 May 2023 08:00:49 +0000

This week we feature the second segment of a special two-part interview featuring award-winning biographer, Stacy Schiff. Her latest book, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, was published by Little, Brown and Company in October 2022. Schiff is the author of several best-selling and acclaimed biographies, including gripping examinations of Cleopatra, the Witches of Salem and her Pulitzer Prize winning study of Vera Nabokov. Schiff is a Guggenheim, NEH and New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellow, and the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award in History and Biography from the New England Historic Genealogical Society. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, among several other publications. Stacy Schiff was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” A. Farrell.

Podcast #133 – Stacy Schiff

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 12 May 2023 12:35:47 +0000

This week we feature the first segment of a special two-part interview with award-winning biographer, Stacy Schiff. Her latest book, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, was published by Little, Brown, and Company in October 2022. Schiff is the author of several best-selling biographies, including compelling examinations of Cleopatra, the Witches of Salem and her Pulitzer Prize winning study of Vera Nabokov. Schiff is a Guggenheim, NEH and New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellow, and the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award in History and Biography from the New England Historic Genealogical Society. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and several other publications. Stacy Schiff was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” A. Farrell.

Podcast #132 – Ashley Brown

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 05 May 2023 12:55:38 +0000

This week we interview Ashley Brown, assistant history professor and the Allan H. Selig Chair in Sport and Society in U.S. History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her biography, Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson, was published in February 2023 by Oxford University Press. Gibson was the first African American to compete and win championship titles at Wimbledon, as well at the United States, French, and Australian Opens. She was also the first Black woman to compete in the Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour. Brown’s article about American women and sports diplomacy was honored by the North American Society for Sport History and published in the Journal of Sport History. The Journal of African American History also published her scholarship. Ashley Brown was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast #131 – RJ Smith

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 20:15:43 +0000

This week we interview RJ Smith, author of Chuck Berry: An American Life, published in November 2022 by Hachette Books. Smith is a senior editor at Los Angeles Magazine, a contributor to Details, a columnist for The Village Voice and a staff writer for Spin. He also has written for GQ, New York Times Magazine, Elle, and Men’s Vogue. His book The One: The Life and Music of James Brown was among the New York Times‘ “100 Notable Books of 2012.” RJ Smith was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast #130 – Andrew Meier

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 12:44:55 +0000

This special episode features excerpts from a conversation between award-winning journalist and author Andrew Meier and fellow biographer and BIO member Kai Bird. Meier’s latest book, Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty, was published in October 2022 by Random House, and it’s a comprehensive examination of one of New York’s most influential families. This live, in-person discussion was recorded on October 11, 2022, in Manhattan, and sponsored by the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. We are pleased to present this discussion with the Levy Center’s permission.

Author photo credit: Brigitte Lacombe

Podcast #129 – Helen Rappaport

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 13:03:46 +0000

This week we interview Helen Rappaport, the British author of sixteen highly regarded biographies. Her latest book, In Search of Mary Seacole: The Making of a Black Cultural Icon and Humanitarian, was published by Pegasus Books in September 2022. Rappaport has been a full-time historian and writer for more than twenty-three years, and in 2003 she discovered and purchased an 1869 portrait of Mary Seacole. The painting now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery and it served as the spark for her investigation into Seacole’s life and career. Rappaport’s previous books includes the biographies, The Romanov Sisters and The Last Days of the Romanovs. Helen Rappaport was interviewed by BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

Author photo credit: Mary Zacaroli

Podcast #128 – Andrew Nagorski

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 12:31:22 +0000

This week we interview Andrew Nagorski, an award-winning journalist and author of Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom, published by Simon and Schuster in August 2022. Nagorski spent more than three decades as a foreign correspondent and editor for Newsweek, and he is the author of eight books, including Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power and The Nazi Hunters. Nagorski gained international notoriety when the Soviet government, angered by his enterprising reporting, expelled him from the country. Andrew Nagorski was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

Author photo credit: Milo Davis

Podcast #127 – Lydia Moland

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 17:20:27 +0000

This week we interview Lydia Moland, professor of philosophy at Colby College and author of Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life, published by in the University of Chicago Press in October 2022. This biography explores the life of one of the nineteenth century’s most courageous abolitionists. Moland’s work on Lydia Maria Child has appeared in the Paris Review, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the American Scholar, and on National Public Radio. And her scholarship in German philosophy, including Hegel’s Aesthetics: The Art of Idealism, has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the ACLS, and the American Academy in Berlin. Lydia Moland was interviewed by BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

Podcast #126 – Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 13:07:15 +0000

This week we interview Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos, a historian, journalist, and author of The Pirate’s Wife: The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd. It was published by Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HarperCollins, in November 2022. She is also the author of The Pirate Next Door: The Untold Story of Eighteenth-Century Pirates’ Wives, Families and Communities, published by Carolina Academic Press, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Southern Living, Virginia Business, and other outlets. Geanacopoulos was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast #125 – Hilary A. Hallett

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 15:07:58 +0000

This week we interview Hilary A. Hallett, the Mendelson Family Professor, Director of American Studies, and Associate Professor of History at Columbia University. Her latest book is Inventing The Hollywood It Girl: How Elinor Glyn Created the Modern Romance and Conquered Early Hollywood, published by Liveright, in July 2022. Hallett is also the author of Go West, Young Women! The Rise of Early Hollywood, and she has written for the Los Angeles Times. Hallett was interviewed by BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

Podcast #124 – Diana P. Parsell

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 14:23:20 +0000

This week we interview writer, editor, and former journalist in the Washington, D.C. area, Diana P. Parsell. Her biography, Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington’s Cherry Trees, was published this month by Oxford University Press. It’s been praised by advance reviewers for its many revelations about a pioneering American woman who brought the world alive for readers a century ago. In support of the book, Parsell’s first biography, she received a Mayborn Fellowship in Biography and BIO’s Hazel Rowley Prize in. Diana P. Parsell was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast Episode #123 – Neil Baldwin

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 14:17:19 +0000

This week we interview Neil Baldwin, an author whose critically acclaimed biographies include examinations of William Carlos Williams, Man Ray, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. His current biography, Martha Graham: When Dance Became Modern, was published by Knopf, in October 2022. Baldwin has served as manager of The Annual Fund at The New York Public Library and was the founding executive director of The National Book Foundation. He is also a Emeritus Distinguished Visiting Professor of History in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of Theatre and Dance in the College of the Arts at Montclair State University; and Critic-in-Residence at The Blended Campus. Baldwin will be interviewed by BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

Podcast Episode #122 – Lerita Coleman Brown

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 13:44:01 +0000

This week we interview Lerita Coleman Brown, author of What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman, published this month by Broadleaf Books. A Distinguished Professor Emerita of Psychology at Agnes Scott College, Brown is a spiritual director/companion, writer, retreat leader, and speaker. She has appeared in the documentaries Back Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story and The Black Church, as well as on several podcasts. Her earlier book, When the Heart Speaks, Listen: Discovering Inner Wisdom, was published in 2019. Lerita Coleman Brown was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast Episode #121 – Marilyn S. Greenwald and Yun Li

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 13:05:24 +0000

This week we interview co-authors Marilyn S. Greenwald and Yun Li about their book, Eunice Hunton Carter: A Lifelong Fight for Social Justice, published by Empire State Editions, in April 2021. Greenwald is Professor Emerita of Journalism at Ohio University and a former Ohio-based newspaper reporter. She has authored five biographies including: A Woman of the Times: Journalism, Feminism and the Career of Charlotte Curtis (designated a “Notable Book” by The New York Times) and The Secret of the Hardy Boys: Leslie McFarlane and the Stratemeyer Syndicate, about the first author of the Hardy Boys book series. Yun Li is a CNBC financial news reporter, whose reporting has appeared in Reuters, Bloomberg News, and other outlets. Greenwald and Yun Li are interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast Episode #120 – Kostya Kennedy

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 13:19:45 +0000

This week we interview journalist Kostya Kennedy, author of True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson, published by St. Martin’s Press, in April 2022. Kennedy is an editorial director at Dotdash Meredith and a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He is also the New York Times–bestselling author of 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports (a runner–up for the 2012 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing) and Pete Rose: An American Dilemma. Both won the Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year. Kennedy was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast Episode #119 – Wanda Hendricks

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 12:45:03 +0000

This week we interview Wanda A. Hendricks, Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of South Carolina and author of The Life of Madie Hall Xuma: Black Women’s Global Activism During Jim Crow and Apartheid, published by the University of Illinois Press (UIP) in October 2022. Hendricks has served as the National Director of the Association of Black Women Historians, and senior editor of the three-volume Black Women In America: Second Edition, published by Oxford University Press. She currently is an editor for the UIP’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality in American History series, and her other books include Gender, Race, and Politics in the Midwest: Black Club Women in Illinois and the first biography of Black activist and intellectual Fannie Barrier Williams. Wanda Hendricks was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast Episode #118 – John A. Farrell

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 05:01:55 +0000

This special episode features excerpts from a spirited conversation between USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page and fellow award-winning biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell. His latest book, Ted Kennedy: A Life, is a fascinating exploration of the life and times of the former icon of the Senate and Kennedy family member, and it was published by Penguin Press in October 2022. This live, in-person interview was recorded on November 15, 2022, and sponsored by the Public Programs Department of the Manhattan-based New-York Historical Society. We are pleased to present this discussion with the Society’s permission.

Podcast Episode #117 – Susan Page

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 13:51:42 +0000

This time we interview Susan Page, an award-winning journalist and USA Today’s Washington Bureau Chief. Page has written biographies of the influential former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former first lady Barbara Bush. Currently, Page is working on a biography of Barbara Walters—the iconic broadcast journalist who passed away in December 2022. Susan Page’s biography of Walters will be published by Simon & Schuster either by the end of this year or the beginning of 2024. Page was interviewed for this episode by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

Podcast Episode #116 – Frances Wilson and Nigel Hamilton

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 11:45:15 +0000

This week we feature a special episode with BIO’s 2022 Plutarch Award-winner Frances Wilson. Her latest book, Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is considered to be an electrifying and revelatory new biography of the English writer. Wilson, a London-based critic, journalist, and author of several award-winning nonfiction works, was interviewed by Nigel Hamilton, a British-born, American-based biographer, academic, and broadcaster. He is the author of numerous biographies, including three volumes on the life and times of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a two-volume examination of Winston Churchill, and a best-selling exploration of a young John F. Kennedy. A former BIO president and chair of BIO’s 2022 Plutarch Award Committee, Nigel Hamilton interviewed Frances Wilson during BIO’s virtual Book Club meeting on September 17, 2022.

Podcast Episode #115 – Megan Marshall

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 17:47:50 +0000

Happy New Year! We’re pleased to start this year with a special episode featuring Pulitzer Prize Award-winning biographer Megan Marshall. During BIO’s virtual conference last year, Marshall received our organization’s highest honor: the BIO Award. Each year this award recognizes outstanding authors for their contributions to the art and craft of biography. Megan Marshall accepted the award with a speech recorded at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. She was introduced by fellow biographer and BIO member Natalie Dykstra on May 14, 2022.

Podcast Episode #114 – Gene Andrew Jarrett

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 16:33:29 +0000

This week we interview Gene Andrew Jarrett, Dean of the Faculty and William S. Tod Professor of English at Princeton University. His latest book, Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird, published in October 2022 by Princeton University Press, examines the Gilded Age writer known as the poet laureate of his race. Jarrett also authored Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature and Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in African American Literature, and he co-edited The Collected Novels of Paul Laurence Dunbar and The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Gene Andrew Jarrett was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast Episode #113 – Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 15:30:03 +0000

This week we interview Iris Jamahl Dunkle, the former Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, California, and an award-winning author. Dunkle’s biography about the artist and wife of famed writer Jack London, titled, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in September 2020. Iris Jamahl Dunkle has authored four poetry collections, including, West : Fire : Archive, and she was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast Episode #112 – Anastasia Curwood

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 14:42:22 +0000

This week we interview Anastasia Curwood, Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and author of Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics, scheduled for publication by the University of North Carolina Press in January 2023. Curwood has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. Her first book, Stormy Weather: Middle-Class African American Marriages Between the Two World Wars, explored African American marriages during the early twentieth century. Anastasia Curwood was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast Episode #111 – Winston James

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 13:40:26 +0000

This week we interview Winston James, author of Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik, published by Columbia University Press in July 2022. A Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, James also authored, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America, winner of the Gordon K. Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship from the Caribbean Studies Association. His three other books examined pioneering Pan-Africanist writer John Brown Russwurm, the poetry of Claude McKay, and Britain’s Caribbean diaspora. Winston James was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

Podcast Episode #110 – Mark Clague

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 13:47:04 +0000

This week we interview Mark Clague, author of O Say Can You Hear: A Cultural Biography of The Star-Spangled Banner, published by W.W. Norton & Company in June 2022. Clague serves as Professor of Musicology, Arts Leadership, and American Culture at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, where he also serves as an associate dean. His other anthem-related publications include the recording Poets & Patriots: A Tuneful History of The Star-Spangled Banner and the Star-Spangled Songbook. Clague’s research has sparked collaborations with the Smithsonian Museum of American History, Los Angeles Grammy Museum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, and a Library of Congress recital with baritone Thomas Hampson. Mark Clague was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast Episode #109 – Allison Gilbert

Biographers International Organization — Sat, 26 Nov 2022 16:16:58 +0000

This week we interview Allison Gilbert, an award-winning journalist and co-author (with writer Julia Scheeres) of Listen, World!: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman. Published by Seal Press in September 2022, this biography of William Randolph Hearst’s highest-paid woman writer has been called “broadminded, sharp-witted, fast-paced, and funny” by Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Debby Applegate. Gilbert has authored three books on grief and loss: Passed and Present, Always Too Soon, and Parentless Parents. Allison Gilbert was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Podcast Episode #108 – Soyica Diggs Colbert

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 11:54:03 +0000

This week we interview Soyica Diggs Colbert, the Idol Family Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts at Georgetown University. Her book, Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry, published by Yale University Press in April 2021, was described in the New York Times as a captivating portrait of writer Lorraine Hansberry’s life, art, and political activism. Diggs Colbert’s writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Public Books, Metrograph, and American Theatre, and she has been featured on media outlets like NPR, USA Today, and CNN. Soyica Diggs Colbert was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast Episode #107 – E. Stanly Godbold

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 16:28:02 +0000

This week we interview E. Stanly Godbold, author of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: Power and Human Rights, 1975–2020. This dual biography of President Carter and his wife Rosalynn was published by Oxford University Press in September 2022. The first volume of Godbold’s extensive examination of the Carters, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: The Georgia Years, 1924–1974, was also published by Oxford University Press. Godbold is Professor Emeritus of History at Mississippi State University, and he served as a consultant and commentator for the PBS American Experience documentary about Jimmy Carter. E. Stanly Godbold was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast Episode #106 – Bernice Lerner

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 14:00:19 +0000

This week we interview Bernice Lerner, a senior scholar at Boston University’s Center for Character and Social Responsibility. Her latest book is a dual biography of a high-ranking British military doctor during World War II, and Lerner’s mother, Rachel Genuth, a poor Jewish teenager from the Hungarian provinces and Holocaust survivor. The book, All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in April 2020. Lerner also authored The Triumph of Wounded Souls: Seven Holocaust Survivors’ Lives. Bernice Lerner was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

Podcast Episode #105 – Li Shan Chan

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 14:00:00 +0000

This week we interview Li Shan Chan, a Singaporean writer, mental health advocate, and doctoral student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who was awarded the Biography Prize by Honolulu’s Center for Biographical Research. Her latest book, Searching for Lee Wen: A Life in 135 Parts, about a unique Singaporean Chinese artist, was published by Epigram Books in May 2022. Her previous books include Yellow Man and her memoir, A Philosopher’s Madness. Chan’s writings have appeared in The Straits Times and Grey Projects, and she served as director of the Writing Center at the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh, where she also held a Writing Residency Fellowship. Li Shan Chan was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast Episode #104 – Marko Perko

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 14:30:13 +0000

This week we interview Marko Perko, a veteran writer and the co-author (with psychiatrist Stephen M. Stahl) of Tesla: His Tremendous and Troubled Life. This biography of Nikola Tesla—the Serbian American engineer who helped to create our modern world with his wide-ranging inventions, discoveries, and patents, including alternating current (AC)—was published by Prometheus Books in May 2022. Perko has written for and edited numerous publications, and he has worked as a columnist, speechwriter, composer, musician, lecturer, and playwright. He is a member of the Authors Guild, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Broadcast Music, Inc., the Organization of American Historians, the British Library, and the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Marko Perko was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast Episode #103 – Etta Madden

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 15:50:04 +0000

This week we interview Etta Madden, author of Engaging Italy: American Women’s Utopian Visions and International Networks. Published by the State University of New York Press in April 2022, this book focuses on three little known Americans—Caroline Crane Marsh, Anne Hampton Brewster, and Emily Bliss Gould—whose lives intersected in an evolving Italy during the mid-19th century. Madden is the author of three additional books that explore American writers, utopian literature, and intentional communities. A professor of English at Missouri State University, she is also the recipient of a Fulbright Award and two Mellon Fellowships. Etta Madden was interviewed by BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

Podcast Episode #102 – Justin Tinsley

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 18:20:00 +0000

This week we interview Justin Tinsley, a senior sports and culture reporter for ESPN’s “The Undefeated.” He has written commentaries and feature stories about people as varied as Marvin Gaye, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Serena Williams, Cardi B, and Kendrick Lamar. Tinsley is also a regular presence on ESPN’s daily sports talk show, “Around the Horn.” And, he is the host of the “30 for 30” podcast, “The King of Crenshaw,” which explores the legacy of the late rapper and activist Nipsey Hussle. Justin Tinsley’s first biography, It Was All a Dream: Biggie and the World That Made Him, was published by Abrams Press in May 2022. He was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast Episode #101 – Betsy Rohaly Smoot

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 16:12:20 +0000

This week we interview Betsy Smoot, an intelligence historian interested in early twentieth-century cryptology and communications. She retired from the Center for Cryptologic History of the National Security Agency in 2017, and she has published articles in Cryptologia and Intelligence and National Security. Her book, Parker Hitt: The Father of American Military Crytology, was published by the University Press of Kentucky in March 2022. Betsy Smoot was interviewed by fellow BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

Podcast Episode #100 – Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 13:21:53 +0000

This week we interview Gwendolyn Mink and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, co-authors of Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress, published by New York University Press in May 2022. This book explores the life and accomplishments of Patsy Mink, the first Asian American woman elected to U.S. House of Representatives, and a dedicated advocate for Title IX legislation and opposition to the Vietnam War. Gwendolyn Mink, Patsy Mink daughter’s, has authored and edited several scholarly books and served as Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Smith College. Co-author Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is Professor of Asian American Studies and the Director of the Humanities Center at the University of California, Irvine. She also is the author of Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The Life of a Wartime Celebrity and Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era. Mink and Wu were interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu

Gwendolyn Mink

Podcast Episode #99 – Toluse Olorunnipa and Robert Samuels

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 16:36:23 +0000

This week we interview Toluse Olorunnipa and Robert Samuels, Peabody Award and Polk Award-winning journalists and co-authors of His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, published by Viking Press in May 2022. Toluse Olorunnipa is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the Post in 2019 and previously covered the White House. Before that, Olorunnipa spent five years at Bloomberg, where he reported on politics and policy from Washington and Florida. Robert Samuels is a national political enterprise reporter for The Washington Post who focuses on the intersection of politics, policy, and people. He previously wrote stories about life in the District for the Post’s social issues team. Samuels joined the Post in 2011 after spending nearly five years working at the Miami Herald. Olorunnipa and Samuels were interviewed by BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

Bloomberg News Reporter Touluse Olorunipa photographed at Bloomberg’s Washington DC news bureau on June 27, 2017. Photographer: Lori Hoffman for Bloomberg.

Robert Samuels

Podcast Episode #98 – Philip Short

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 13:06:00 +0000

This week we interview Philip Short, a British journalist who has written several definitive biographies, including Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare. Short has had a long career as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington, D.C., working for the BBC, the Economist, and the Times of London. Short’s latest biography is, Putin, published by Henry Holt & Company in July 2022. It examines the life of Russia’s controversial President Vladimir Putin. Philip Short was interviewed via Zoom by fellow journalist and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

Photo credit: Bob Swaim

Podcast Episode #97 – Mark Lee Gardner

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 21:31:52 +0000

This week we interview award winning writer Mark Lee Gardner. His latest biography, The Earth is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation, was published by Mariner Books in June 2022.Gardner’s previous books, Rough Riders, To Hell on a Fast Horse and Shot All to Hell, received multiple honors, including a Spur Award from Western Writers of America. An authority on the American West, Gardner has appeared on PBS’s American Experience, the History and the Travel Channels, AMC and NPR. He has written for National Geographic History, American Heritage, the Los Angeles Times, True West, and American Cowboy. Mark Gardner was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast Episode #96 – Paulina L. Alberto

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 13:36:35 +0000

This week we interview Paulina L. Alberto, an Argentine-born historian of Afro-Latin America and Professor of History, Spanish, and Portuguese at the University of Michigan. Her biography, Black Legend: The Many Lives of Raúl Grigera and the Power of Racial Storytelling in Modern Argentina, was published by Cambridge University Press in January 2022. As the author of Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Brazil, she received the Roberto Reis Prize for Best Book in Brazilian Studies and the Warren Dean Prize for Best Book in Brazilian History, along with the James Alexander Robertson Prize for best article in the Hispanic American Historical Review. Paulina Alberto was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

Podcast Episode #95 – Brian Harker

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 14:34:36 +0000

This week we interview award-winning author and Brigham Young University music professor Brian Harker. His latest biography, Sportin’ Life: John W. Bubbles an American Classic, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2022. John Bubbles was one of the jazz world’s most singular and elusive architects. Harker also explored jazz music in his previous books, Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings and Jazz: An American Journey. Brian Harker was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member and Eric K. Washington.

Podcast Episode #94 – Kathleen Stone

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 27 May 2022 12:08:07 +0000

This week we interview Kathleen Stone, a Boston-based lawyer whose reviews, essays and have appeared in MS Magazine, Arts Fuse, Ploughshares, Pangyrus, The Timberline Review, Los Angeles Review of Books and Grist. She also co-hosts Booklab, a literary salon in Boston. Stone’s biography, her first, explores the lives of seven remarkable women from a wide range of backgrounds. They Called Us Girls: Stories of Female Ambition from Suffrage to Mad Men, was published in March 2022 by Cynren Press. She was interviewed during an online Zoom session in February of this year by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

Podcast Episode #93 – David Maraniss, part 2

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 13 May 2022 22:01:01 +0000

This week we offer the second part of two special episodes featuring David Maraniss, the veteran journalist and author of 13 highly regarded books. His latest book, Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, will be published by Simon and Schuster in August 2022. Maraniss is a New York Times bestselling author, associate editor at The Washington Post and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. In addition, his reporting and writing has earned him such honors as the George Polk Award, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Frankfurt eBook Award. David Maraniss was interviewed on October 13, 2021, via an online Zoom session, by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

Podcast Episode #92 – David Maraniss, part 1

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 May 2022 13:25:08 +0000

This week we offer the first of two special episodes featuring David Maraniss, the veteran journalist and author of 13 highly regarded books. His latest book, Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, will be published by Simon & Schuster in August 2022. Maraniss is a New York Times bestselling author and associate editor at The Washington Post. In 1992 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on then presidential candidate Bill Clinton…and he was a member of The Washington Post team that won a 2007 Pulitzer for their coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting. His writing has earned such notable honors as the George Polk Award, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Frankfurt eBook Award. David Maraniss was interviewed on October 13, 2021, via an online Zoom session, by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

Podcast Episode #91 – Tomiko Brown-Nagin

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 14:07:32 +0000

This week we interview Tomiko Brown-Nagin, author of Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality, published by Pantheon in January 2022. Brown-Nagin serves as Dean of Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, and Professor of History at Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, she was appointed chair of the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery. Her previous book, Courage to Dissent, won the Bancroft Prize in 2011. Tomiko Brown-Nagin was interviewed on February 9, 2022, via an online Zoom session, by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Photo credit: Jessica Scranton

Podcast Episode #90 – John Markoff

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 12:46:11 +0000

This week we interview John Markoff, a Pulitzer Prize winning, veteran science and technology journalist for The New York Times, the Pacific News Service, InfoWorld, Byte Magazine, and The San Jose Mercury. Markoff also has shared his journalistic skills as a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley School of Journalism, and as an adjunct faculty member of the Stanford Graduate Program on Journalism. His latest biography about a man revered by Steve Jobs and other Silicon Valley innovators is called, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand, published by Penguin Press in March 2022. John Markoff was interviewed via an online Zoom session on January 25th of this year, by fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Photo credit: Leslie Terzian Markoff

Podcast Episode #89 – Alejandro Madrid

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 16:32:59 +0000

This week we interview Alejandro Madrid, an award-winning Cornell University musicologist who specializes in music and expressive culture from Latin America and Latinxs in the United States. He has authored more than a half dozen books, including his latest, Tania Léon’s Stride. A Polyrhythmic Life, published by the University of Illinois Press in December 2021. Tania Léon, now in her late 70s, is a sought-after composer, conductor, educator, and tireless advocate for the arts. Last year she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her composition, Stride, Léon’s orchestral tribute to the 19th Amendment that granted women the right to vote. Alejandro Madrid was interviewed, online via Zoom on February 9, 2022, by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast Episode #88 – Paulina Bren

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 16:18:09 +0000

This week we interview Paulina Bren, an award-winning writer and Vassar College historian. Her latest book, The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free is a New York Times Editor’s Choice. The Barbizon has received international press coverage and it has been optioned by HBO and Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke. Foreign rights have been sold to Italy, Spain, Hungary, South America, China, Russia and South Korea. Paulina Bren is a well-known scholar of everyday life and communism behind the Iron Curtain, starting with her groundbreaking book, The Greengrocer and His TV. For this BIO episode, Paulina Bren was interviewed online, via Zoom, on November 5, 2021 by BIO member Kitty Kelley.

Podcast Episode #87 – Sheena Harris

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 14:03:41 +0000

This week we interview Sheena Harris, a Woodburn Associate Professor of history and coordinator of the Africana Studies Program at West Virginia University. Previously, she served as an Associate Professor of history and the Inaugural Director of Student Engagement Initiatives at Tuskegee University. She is a first-time biographer and author of Margaret Murray Washington: The Life and Times of a Career Clubwoman, published by the University of Tennessee Press in February 2021. A powerful leader in the Black women’s club movement, Margaret Murray Washington was the wife of legendary educator and Tuskegee University founder, Booker T. Washington. Sheena Harris was interviewed on January 21, 2022, via an online Zoom session, by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

Podcast Episode #86 – Tyrone McKinley Freeman

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 13:34:22 +0000

This week we interview Tyrone McKinley Freeman, an award-winning associate professor of Philanthropic Studies and director of undergraduate programs at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. His latest book, Madam C.J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving: Black Women’s Philanthropy During Jim Crow, was published by the University of Illinois Press in September 2020. His work has appeared or been cited in the New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, TIME, Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, News One, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, CASE Currents, and Advancing Philanthropy. Tyrone McKinley Freeman was interviewed online, via Zoom, on November 22, 2021, by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast Episode #85 – Debby Applegate

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 12:08:29 +0000

This week we interview biographer and historian, Debby Applegate. Her first book, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. This book also was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, NPR’s Fresh Air, the Washington Post, Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and American Heritage Magazine. Her current book, Madam: A Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age, was published by Doubleday in November 2021. Debby Applegate was interviewed online, via Zoom, on October 29, 2021 by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

Podcast Episode #84 – Gary Ginsberg

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 12:00:55 +0000

Happy New Year! This week we interview Gary Ginsberg, author of The New York Times bestseller, First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (and Unelected) People Who Shaped Out Presidents, published by Twelve in July 2021. The book explores nine select American presidents (Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton) and the relationships they had with their best friends. A lawyer by training, Ginsberg worked for the Clinton administration, served as a senior editor and counsel at the political magazine, George, and held executive positions at the News Corporation, Time Warner and SoftBank. He has published pieces in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and he was as an on-air political contributor during the early days of MSNBC. Gary Ginsberg was interviewed online, via Zoom, on October 12, 2021 by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

Podcast Episode #83 – Writing the First Biography of Your Subject

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 31 Dec 2021 11:00:35 +0000

This week we offer the next episode in a special mini-series featuring highlights from panel discussions conducted during BIO’s first virtual annual conference, held May 14-16, 2021. The session, Writing the First Biography of Your Subject, featured biographers Justin Gifford (Revolution or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver), Abigail Santamaria (Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis) and Carol Sklenicka (Alice Adams: Portrait of a Writer). The panel was moderated by author and BIO member Debby Applegate (Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age).

Podcast Episode #82 – The Art and Technology of Interviewing

Biographers International Organization — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 18:23:37 +0000

This week we offer the next episode in a special mini-series featuring highlights from panel discussions conducted during BIO’s first virtual annual conference, held May 14-16, 2021. The session, The Art and Technology of Interviewing, featured authors John Brady (The Art of Interviewing), Claudia Dreifus (Interview; The New York Times’ Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science) and Brian Jay Jones (Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination). The panel was moderated by author & BIO member James McGrath Morris (Tony Hillerman: A Life).

Podcast Episode #81 – How to Pay for It…Or Funding Your Biography

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 18:14:56 +0000

This week we offer the next episode in a special mini-series featuring highlights from panel discussions conducted during BIO’s first virtual annual conference, held May 14-16, 2021. The session, “How to Pay For It, Or Funding Your Biography,” featured biographer Carla Kaplan (Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance), Steve Hindle of California’s Huntington Library, and Mark Silver of the National Endowment for the Humanties. The panel was moderated by author and BIO member Heath Hardage Lee (The League of Women: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home).

Podcast Episode #80 – Researching Under-Documented Lives

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 15:07:19 +0000

This week we offer the next episode in a special mini-series featuring highlights from panel discussions conducted during BIO’s first virtual annual conference, held May 14-16, 2021. The session, “Researching Under-Documented Lives, featured biographers Gaiutra Bahadur (Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture), Channing Gerald Joseph and Pamela Newkirk (Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga), The panel was moderated by author and BIO member Kavita Das (Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar).

Podcast Episode #79 – Swipe Right for your Subject: How Do You Know It’s the Right One?

Biographers International Organization — Sat, 04 Dec 2021 03:52:41 +0000

This week we offer the first in a mini-series of special episodes featuring highlights from panel discussions conducted during BIO’s first virtual annual conference, held May 14-16, 2021. The session, Swipe Right for your Subject: How Do You Know It’s the Right One?, featured biographer Mary V. Dearborn (Ernest Hemingway: A Biography), long time book editor Gerald Howard and biographer Eric K. Washington (Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal). The panel was moderated by author and BIO member Gayle Feldman.

Podcast Episode #78 – Daniel de Visé

Biographers International Organization — Sat, 27 Nov 2021 04:26:08 +0000

This week we interview veteran Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and writer, Daniel de Visé. Exploring the life and times of a legendary guitarist and singer, his latest biography, King of the Blues, The Rise and Reign of B.B. King, was published by Grove Press in October 2021. De Visé’s previous books include biographies of actors Andy Griffin and Don Knotts (Andy & Don, Simon & Schuster), as well as professional cyclist and Congressional Gold Medal recipient Greg LeMond (The Comeback, Grove Atlantic). Daniel de Visé was interviewed on October 1, 2021 via Zoom by BIO member and fellow biographer John “Jack” Farrell.

Author photo credit: John M.W. King

Podcast Episode #77 – David Hajdu and John Carey

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 13:19:32 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview David Hajdu and John Carey, collaborators on a biography in graphic form about three vaudeville stars. A Revolution in Three Acts: The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay and Julian Eltinge was published Columbia University Press in September 2021. David Hajdu is a biographer, cultural historian, novelist, and songwriter. His previous biographies include Lush Life, Positively 4th Street and Adrianne Geffel, and he teaches at the Columbia University Journalism School. John Carey is a painter who served as the editorial cartoonist for Greater Media Newspapers for many years. Hajdu and Carey were interviewed via Zoom by BIO member Eric K. Washington on September 29, 2021.

Author photo credit: Takato Harkness

Podcast Episode #76 – Ty Seidule

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 13:27:49 +0000

In this week’s episode we interview Ty Seidule, author of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause, published by St. Martin’s Press in January 2021. Seidule served in the U.S. Army for thirty-six years, retiring as a brigadier general in 2020. Also, he is a Professor Emeritus of History at West Point, where he taught for two decades. Seidule is a New America Fellow, as well as the Chamberlain Fellow at Hamilton College in upstate New York, and he currently serves as Vice Chair of the Department of Defense’s National Commission on Base Renaming. He was interviewed on September 27, 2021 via an online Zoom session with veteran biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

Podcast Episode #75 – Kevin McGruder

Biographers International Organization — Sat, 16 Oct 2021 14:26:13 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Kevin McGruder, Associate Professor of history at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He is a first-time biographer and author of Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem, published by Columbia University Press in July 2021. During the 1990s, Kevin McGruder served as the director of real estate development for the Abyssinian Development Corporation, a nonprofit church-based organization in Harlem, and he wrote a book about race and real estate in Harlem. McGruder was interviewed on September 22, 2021 via an online Zoom session conducted by fellow BIO member and author Eric K. Washington.

Podcast Episode #74 – Molly Ball

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 18:40:42 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview journalist Molly Ball, author of The New York Times bestseller Pelosi, a biography of the first woman to serve as the U.S. Congress’ Speaker of the House. Pelosi was published in May 2020 by Henry Holt. Molly Ball is Time magazine’s national political correspondent and a frequent television and radio commentator. She has received numerous awards for her political coverage, including the Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress, the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency and the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting. From her home in Washington, DC, Ball was interviewed on September 24, 2021 via Zoom, by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

Podcast Episode #73 – Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 14:36:45 +0000

In this week’s episode we interview Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Professor of Biography and English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Working with 19 other authors, her book of edited biographies, Britain’s Black Past, was published by Liverpool University Press in March 2020. She also has published nine other books, including Carrington: A Life; Black London: Life Before Emancipation; Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden; and Mr. and Mrs. Price: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Family Moved Out of Slavery and into Legend. Gretchen Gerzina was interviewed, via Zoom, on July 14, 2021, by writer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast Episode #72 – Tamara Payne

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 12:26:20 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Tamara Payne. Working with her late father, the award-winning and New York-based print journalist Les Payne, Tamara Payne co-wrote The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X. Published in October 2020 by Liveright, this biography of the charismatic and controversial Muslim leader known as Malcolm X earned a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Tamara Payne was interviewed in her home in New York City on July 16, 2021, by writer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast Episode #71 – Dinyar Patel

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 12:51:35 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Dinyar Patel, history professor at the S. B. Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai, India, and the author of Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, published in May 2020 by Harvard University Press. Dinyar Patel was interviewed in his Mumbai home on July 15, 2021, via Zoom by writer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Podcast Episode #70 – Annette Gordon-Reed

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 15:21:59 +0000

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. She also is the author of several acclaimed books, including The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and the Anisfield-Wolf Nonfiction Book Award. Gordon-Reed lives in New York and Cambridge, and her latest book, On Juneteenth, was published by Liveright in May 2021.

Photo by Tony Rinaldo

Podcast Episode #69 – Stephen Budiansky

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 14:20:44 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Stephen Budiansky, a veteran historian, biographer, and journalist who has published 15 books, including his current biography, Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel, published by W.W. Norton & Company in May 2021. His writing also has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and he is a Guggenheim Fellow. Budiansky was interviewed in his Loudoun County, Virginia, home via Zoom on July 8, 2021, by BIO member Sonja Williams.

Photo by Martha Polkey

Podcast Episode #68 – Kerri Greenidge

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 14:29:04 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Kerri Greenidge, author of Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter, published November 19, 2019, by Liveright/Norton. Greenidge was interviewed via Zoom on June 28, 2021, by writer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

Photo by Matthew Guillory

Podcast Episode #67 – Raquel Ramsey and Tricia Aurand

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 15:08:11 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Raquel Ramsey and Tricia Aurand, co-authors of Taking Flight: The Nadine Ramsey Story, published in September 2020 by the University of Kansas Press. Ramsey is a retired Beverly Hills High School teacher and ESL coordinator. She also is the widow of Col. Edwin P. Ramsey, a decorated World War II hero. Aurand is an award-winning screenwriter, media critic, and podcast host who has several scripts in production and development. Aurand and Ramsey were interviewed via Zoom on February 25, 2021 by writer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Tricia Aurand

Raquel Ramsey

Podcast Episode #66 -Patrick Parr

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 14:22:21 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Patrick Parr, author of One Week in America: The 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival and a Changing Nation, published March 2021 by Chicago Review Press. Parr’s narrative is a day-by-day examination of a week that began with President Lyndon B. Johnson announcement that he would not seek re-election and ended with the fallout created by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s the assassination. Parr includes never-before-published letters from festival attendees Joseph Heller (Catch-22), Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man), Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five), and Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead). Parr was interviewed via Zoom in his home in Yokohama, Japan, on February 25, 2021 by writer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast Episode #65 – Alison M. Parker

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 21 May 2021 13:41:15 +0000

In this week’s episode we interview Alison M. Parker, author of Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell, published by the University of North Carolina Press in December 2020. Parker’s book is the first full-length biography of Terrell, one of the most prominent African American activists of her time, and whose career bridged the late nineteenth century to the civil rights movement of the 1950s. Parker, a history professor and department chair at the University of Delaware, was interviewed by BIO member Lisa Napoli via Zoom in April 2021.

Podcast Episode #64 – Janice P. Nimura

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 07 May 2021 12:33:42 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Janice P. Nimura, author of The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine, published in January 2021 by W. W. Norton & Company. Her previous book, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back, was a New York Times notable book in 2015. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian, The Rumpus, and LitHub, among other publications. Nimura was interviewed by writer and BIO member Lisa Napoli via Zoom on March 18th, 2021.

Podcast Episode #63 – Jayne E. Zanglein

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 14:43:44 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview former lawyer and college professor Jayne E. Zanglein, author of The Girl Explorers: The Untold Story of the Globetrotting Women Who Trekked, Flew, and Fought Their Way Around the World, published March 2, 2021, by Sourcebooks. Zanglein was interviewed in her home in North Carolina on March 18th, 2021, via Zoom by writer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast Episode #62 – Martha Ackmann

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 14:40:46 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Martha Ackmann, author of These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson, published Feb 25, 2021, by W. W. Norton & Company. Ackmann’s award-winning books include The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight, and Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone, First Woman to Play Profession Baseball in the Negro League. Ackmann was interviewed in her home in western Massachusetts on March 10, 2021, via Zoom by writer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast Episode #61 – Stephen Heyman

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:07:59 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Stephen Heyman, author of The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution, published April 14, 2020, by W.W. Norton & Company. Heyman, a former features editor for The New York Times Style Magazine, also has written for The Times, Slate, Vogue, and many other publications. He was interviewed in his home in Pittsburgh on March 10, 2021, via Zoom by writer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast Episode #60 – Hilary Holladay

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 14:46:57 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Hilary Holladay, author of The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography, published November 17, 2020, by Nan A. Talese. Holladay was interviewed in her home in Orange Country, Virginia, on March 8, 2021, via Zoom by writer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast Episode #59 – David Michaelis

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 12:07:17 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview three-time biographer David Michaelis, author of Eleanor, a new single-volume biography of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt released by Simon and Schuster in October 2020. Michaelis was interviewed in his home in Westchester County, New York, on February 11, 2021, via Zoom, by writer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast Episode #58 – Leslie Brody

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 14:32:22 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Leslie Brody, author of Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy, published in December, 2020 by Seal Press. Brody was interviewed in her home in southern California via Zoom on December 23, 2020, by writer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.

Podcast Episode #57 – Philip Clark

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 15:48:29 +0000

We’re back…and we wish nothing but the best for you in 2021!

In this week’s episode, we interview Philip Clark, author of Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time, a biography of jazz pianist, Dave Brubeck. Clark was interviewed by writer and BIO member Lisa Napoli via Zoom on December 10th, 2020.

Podcast Episode #56 – David Levering Lewis

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 15:35:23 +0000

This week we feature an archived presentation from the City University of New York’s Leon Levy Center for Biography. In October 2013, distinguished historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Levering Lewis delivered the sixth annual Leon Levy Biography Lecture. Levering Lewis is the author of critically acclaimed biographies of W.E.B. DuBois and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Podcast Episode #55 – Silvana Paternostro

Biographers International Organization — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 00:13:23 +0000

This week we feature an archived interview from the City University of New York’s Leon Levy Center for Biography. Author Silvana Paternostro was interviewed by editor Cristobal Pena about her book, Solitude & Company: The Life of Gabriel Garcia Marquez Told with Help From His Friends, Family, Fans, Arguers, Pranksters, Drunks and a Few Respectable Souls. Published by Seven Stories Press in 2019, Paternostro’s biography explores the life and relationships of Garcia Marquez, author of the landmark novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. This interviewed was recorded in the Levy Center in February 2019.

Photo by Marcela Garcia

Podcast Episode #54 – Jonathan Alter

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 15:56:04 +0000

This week we feature an interview with veteran journalist Jonathan Alter. Alter’s fourth presidential biography, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life, was published by Simon & Schuster in October 2020. It’s the first full-length biography of the oldest living president in American history. Alter is a long-time contributor and political analyst for NBC and MSNBC, and recently he was interviewed by fellow biographer David Greenberg via Zoom.

Podcast Episode #53 – David Nasaw

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 16:06:35 +0000

This week we feature an archived “live” presentation from the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Leon Levy Center for Biography. On September 25, 2019, historian David Nasaw, an award-winning author of biographies about Joseph P. Kennedy, William Randolph Hearst, and Andrew Carnegie, delivered the Levy Center’s 12th Annual Lecture. Nasaw’s engaging presentation was titled My Three Moguls.

Podcast Episode #52 – Jeffrey C. Stewart and David Levering Lewis

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 21:46:33 +0000

This week we feature an archival interview from the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Leon Levy Center for Biography. Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Jeffrey C. Stewart and David Levering Lewis discussed Stewart’s biography, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, published by Oxford University Press in December 2017. This interview was recorded on September 21, 2018.

Jeffrey C. Stewart

David Levering Lewis

Podcast Episode #51 – Hermione Lee

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 13:15:05 +0000

This week we feature an archival interview from the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Leon Levy Center for Biography. Hermione Lee, distinguished British biographer, former president of Oxford University’s Wolfson College, and winner of the 2020 BIO Award, was interviewed by fellow award-winning author Gary Giddins. Lee’s books include biographies of writers Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Virginia Woolf. This interview was recorded in front of a Levy Center audience on March 25, 2013.

Podcast Episode #50 – David Blight

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 14:42:46 +0000

This week we feature an archival interview from the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Leon Levy Center for Biography. Distinguished author and Yale University professor David Blight was interviewed by author and CUNY history professor James Oakes. Blight’s Pultizer Prize-winning book, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2018. This interview was recorded in front of a Levy Center audience on April 15, 2019.

Podcast Episode #49 – Bridgett M. Davis

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 15:01:05 +0000

In this week’s episode, we feature an archival interview from the City University of New York’s Leon Levy Center for Biography. Author Bridgett M. Davis was interviewed by author and Columbia University professor Farah Jasmine Griffin about Davis’s book, The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers. This interview was recorded in front of a live Levy Center audience on February 15, 2019.

Bridget M. Davis; photo by Nina Subin

Farah Jasmine Griffin

Podcast Episode #48 – Peniel E. Joseph

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 17:30:36 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Peniel E. Joseph, distinguished University of Texas at Austin history professor and of author of The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. (Basic Books, 2020) – a biography that explores the lives and philosophies of two iconic African American leaders. This interview was recorded via an online Zoom session in July 2020.

Photo by Kelvin Ma

Podcast Episode #47 – David O. Stewart

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 14:48:50 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview David O. Stewart, a versatile novelist and biographer who has examined the political lives of President Andrew Johnson, Aaron Burr, and James Madison. He is currently working on a biography of President George Washington. This interview was recorded in December 2019 in Washington, D.C.

Podcast Episode #46 – Kitty Kelley, Part II

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 14:14:26 +0000

In this week’s episode, listen to the second part of our interview with veteran biographer Kitty Kelley. She has written biographies of Oprah Winfrey, the British Royal Family, and Nancy Reagan—just to name a few. Kelley spoke with BIO member John A. Farrell in February 2020 in Washington, D.C.

Photo by Philip Bermingham

Podcast Episode #45 – Kitty Kelley, Part I

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 12:44:49 +0000

In this week’s episode, we present the first of a two-part interview with veteran biographer, Kitty Kelley. She has written bestselling biographies of Frank Sinatra, the George Herbert Walker Bush family, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Elizabeth Taylor—just to name a few. Kelley spoke with BIO member John A. Farrell in February 2020 in Washington, D.C.

Photo by Philip Bermingham

Podcast Episode #44 – James H. Johnston

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 17 Jul 2020 13:55:00 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview James H. Johnston, author of From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family (Fordham University Press, 2015). This interview was recorded in December 2019 in Washington, D.C.

Podcast Episode #43 – Lisa Napoli

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 14:08:37 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Lisa Napoli, author of her third book, Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN and the Birth of 24 Hour News (Abrams Press, 2020). This interview was recorded via an online Zoom session in May 2020.

Podcast Episode #42 – Eric K. Washington

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 12:51:42 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Eric K. Washington, first-time biographer and author of Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal (Liveright, 2019). This interview was recorded via an online Zoom session in June 2020.

Podcast Episode #41 – Ash Carter and Sam Kashner

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 Dec 2019 16:11:56 +0000

This week’s podcast features Ash Carter and Sam Kashner, co-authors of Life Isn’t Everything: Mike Nichols, as Remembered by 150 of His Closest Friends. The episode was recorded in November 2019 in Santa Monica, California.

This is our last podcast of the year. Look for new episodes in early 2020.

Podcast Episode #40 – Eugene Meyer

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 14:03:29 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview journalist Eugene Meyer, author of Five for Freedom: The African American Solders in John Brown’s Army. This interview was recorded in October 2019 in Washington, DC.

Podcast Episode #39 – Danny Fingeroth

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 15:19:28 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Danny Fingeroth, author of A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee. This interview was recorded in Sherman Oaks, California, in November 2019.

Podcast Episode #38 – Pamela Newkirk

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 15:39:16 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Pamela Newkirk, award-winning author of Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (2015). Her latest book, published this year, is Diversity, Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business. This interview was recorded in November 2019 in Washington, DC.

Podcast Episode #37 – Andrew Marble

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 16:27:38 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Andrew Marble, author of Boy on the Bridge: The Story of John Shalikashvili’s American Success. This interview was recorded in Washington, DC, in October 2019.

Podcast Episode #36 – Holly Van Leuven

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 14:57:25 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Holly Van Leuven, author of Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #35 – Michael Kranish

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 13:14:42 +0000

In this week’s episode, fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell interviews Michael Kranish, author of The World’s Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor; America’s First Black Sports Hero. This interview was recorded in Washington, DC in September 2019.

Podcast Episode #34 – Julie Dobrow

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 13:26:02 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Julie Dobrow, author of After Emily: Two Remarkable Women and the Legacy of America’s Greatest Poet. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #33 – Catherine Reef

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 15:07:04 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Catherine Reef, author of Mary Shelley: The Strange True Tale of Frankenstein’s Creator. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #32 – Marcia Biederman

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 14:17:44 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Marcia Biederman, author of Popovers and Candlelight: Patricia Murphy and the Rise and Fall of a Restaurant Empire. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #31 – Nigel Hamilton and Hans Renders

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 14:33:28 +0000

In this week’s episode we interview Nigel Hamilton and Hans Renders, authors The ABC of Modern Biography. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Photo by Mannus van der Laan

Podcast Episode #30 – Anne Boyd Rioux

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 14:43:55 +0000

In this week’s episode we interview BIO board member Anne Boyd Rioux, author of Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #29 – John Kaag

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 19:38:06 +0000

In this week’s episode we interview John Kaag, author of Walking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #28 – James Altas

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 14:23:12 +0000

Honoring The Life Of an Acclaimed Biographer James Atlas March 22,1949-September 4, 2019

In this week’s episode, we interview James Atlas, author of The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2018 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #27 – 2019 BIO Conference Panel: Fact and Speculation

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 15:05:02 +0000

This week’s episode features highlights of a panel from the 2019 BIO Conference, “Fact and Speculation,” with moderator James McGrath Morris and panelists Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Michael Hainey, and Stacy Schiff.

Podcast Episode #26 – 2019 BIO Conference Panel: Promoting Your Biography

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 14:13:50 +0000

This week’s episode features highlights of a panel from the 2019 BIO Conference, “Promoting Your Biography,” with moderator Ruth Franklin and panelists Dan Blank, Melinda Ponder, and Declan Taintor.

Podcast Episode #25 – 2019 BIO Conference Panel: Fire Up Your Narrative

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 14:11:56 +0000

This week’s episode features highlights from a panel from the 2019 BIO Conference, “Fire Up Your Narrative,” with moderator Linda Leavell and panelists John A. Farrell, Ruth Franklin, Caroline Fraser, and Tom Reiss.

Podcast Episode #24 – 2019 BIO Conference Panel: Telling Life Stories in These Chaotic Times

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 14:48:23 +0000

This week’s episode features highlights from a panel from the 2019 BIO Conference, “Telling Life Stories in These Chaotic Times,” with moderator John A. Farrell and panelist Sarah Burnes, Tim Duggan, and Katherine Flynn.

Podcast Episode #23 – 2019 BIO Conference Plenary Session

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 15:04:28 +0000

This week’s episode features David Remnick, Stacy Schiff, and Judith Thurman in conversation during the plenary session at BIO’s 10th annual conference in New York City on May 18, 2019.

Photo by Brian Jay Jones

Podcast Episode #22 – James McGrath Morris

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 26 Jul 2019 17:36:38 +0000

This week’s episode pays tribute to author and BIO co-founder James McGrath Morris. At BIO’s 10th annual conference in New York City, Morris accepted BIO’s Biographers Award with an inspiring address on May 18, 2019.

Podcast Episode #21 – Kavita Das

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 15:06:10 +0000

In this week’s episode we interview Kavita Das, first-time biographer and author of Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #20 – Tonya Bolden

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 15:01:56 +0000

In this week’s episode we interview Tonya Bolden, experienced young adult and children’s biographer, and author of Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass, a Monumental American Man and No Small Potatoes: Junius G. Groves and His Kingdom in Kansas. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #19 – Readings from the 2019 BIO Conference

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 17:22:42 +0000

This week enjoy a special episode that highlights the work of biographers from around the country and the world. Recorded on May 17, 2019, at BIO’s annual conference in New York City, each of the featured biographers read a three-minute excerpt from their latest book.

Podcast Episode #18 – Imani Perry

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 14:22:13 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Imani Perry, Princeton University professor and author of Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #17 – Brian Jay Jones

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 21 Jun 2019 14:41:56 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview veteran biographer Brian Jay Jones, author of Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodore Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #16 – Monica Szurmuk

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 12:38:25 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Monica Szurmuk, author of Las Vocación Desmurada: Una Biografia de Alberto Gerchunoff. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #15 – Marc Leepson

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 04:27:26 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview veteran writer Marc Leepson, author of Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, From the Vietnam War and Pop Stardom to Murder and an Unsolved, Violent Death. This interview was recorded in May 2019 in Washington, DC.

Podcast Episode #14 – John A. Farrell

Biographers International Organization — Sat, 01 Jun 2019 08:41:08 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview investigative journalist and biographer John A. Farrell, author of Richard Nixon: The . This interview was recorded in May 2019 in Washington, DC.

Podcast Episode #13 – Anthony DeCurtis

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 24 May 2019 10:24:48 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Grammy Award winning writer Anthony DeCurtis, author of Lou Reed: A Life. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2018 annual conference in New York City.

Photo by Deborah Feingold

Podcast Episode #12 – Bruce Kennett

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 17 May 2019 12:20:54 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview book designer and first-time biographer Bruce Kennett, author of W. A. Dwiggins: A Life in Design. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2018 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #11 – Karin Roffman

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 10 May 2019 22:35:41 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Yale University lecturer and writer Karin Roffman, author of The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery’s Early Life. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2018 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #10 – William Taubman

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 03 May 2019 11:55:56 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer William Taubman, author of Gorbachev: His Life and Times. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2018 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #9 – Caroline Fraser

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 14:38:00 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Caroline Fraser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2018 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #8 – Ray Anthony Shepard

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 19 Apr 2019 15:10:20 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Ray Anthony Shepard, author of Now or Never!: 54th Massachusetts Infantry’s Fight to End Slavery. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2018 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #7 – Readings from the 2018 BIO Conference

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 14:27:55 +0000

This week, enjoy a special episode that highlights the work of biographers from around the country. Recorded on May 17, 2018, at BIO’s annual conference in New York City, each of the featured biographers read a short, three-minute excerpt from their latest book.

2019 BIO conference attendees can expect to hear similar exciting readings at the Fabbri Mansion in Manhattan on Friday May 18th. Visit BIO’s conference webpage for more details.

Podcast Episode #6 – Cathy Curtis

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 05 Apr 2019 16:45:48 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Cathy Curtis, BIO President and author of A Generous Vision: The Creative Life of Elaine de Kooning. This interview was recorded in 2018.

Podcast Episode #5 – Vanda Krefft

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 15:28:45 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Vanda Krefft, author of The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2018 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #4 – Alan Pell Crawford

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 18:42:48 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Alan Pell Crawford, author of How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2018 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #3 – Laurie Gwen Shapiro

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 14:33:21 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author of The Stowaway: A Young. Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2018 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #2 – Beverly Gray

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 13:18:49 +0000

In this week’s episode, we interview Beverly Gray, author of Seduced by Mrs. Robinson: How The Graduate Became the Touchstone of a Generation. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2018 annual conference in New York City.

Podcast Episode #1 – James Atlas

Biographers International Organization — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 05:13:21 +0000