UPDATE: A recording of this event is now available here.
Biographers International Organization (BIO) is pleased to announce that Michael Korda will receive its Editorial Excellence Award for 2023. Established in 2014, this annual award honors an editor for outstanding work in the service of biography and literature. Korda will be presented with the award on Wednesday, November 1 at the Skylight Room of the CUNY Graduate Center in New York.
BIO’s Awards Committee, chaired by Heather Clark, selected Korda for the honor.
Michael Korda was an editor and later editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster for nearly five decades. Among the more than 500 books he worked on, he edited all three of David McCullough’s prize-winning biographies—of Harry Truman, John Adams and the young Theodore Roosevelt—as well as autobiographies by Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Kirk Douglas and Charles de Gaulle.
He has written biographies of Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and T. E. Lawrence, as well as several works of history, including one about the Battle of Britain and one about Dunkirk. His book about the lives of the major soldier-poets of World War I, Muse of Fire, is being published in February 2024. His several memoirs, including Another Life, reveal fascinating aspects of his life and the publishing world.
Korda, who was born in London, was educated at Institute Le Rosey in Switzerland, and Magdalen College, Oxford. He served in the Royal Air Force and received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary for his participation in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He makes his home in Dutchess County, New York, with his wife, Maggie Simmons.
The program is scheduled for 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Graduate Center on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. Among the scheduled speakers paying tribute to Korda will be authors Ian Buruma, Kitty Kelley (a BIO board member), and Simon Winchester. The event is free but registration is required at our Eventbrite page.
BIO’s Editorial Excellence Award has been presented since 2014. Past recipients are Bob Bender, Tim Duggan, Robert Gottlieb, Gerald Howard, Gayatri Patnaik, Jonathan Segal, Ileene Smith, Nan A. Talese, and Robert Weil.
