Panels and Prize Presentations Highlight BIO Conference

BIO’s Program Committee is putting the final touches on the fifth annual Compleat Biographer Conference, which is returning to Boston, site of the inaugural conference. In a sign of how BIO has grown since 2010, more than 200 biographers are already signed up for this year’s event, compared to the 163 who attended the first conference. And this year, some of the panel sessions and tours are already sold out.

As always, one of the highlights of the conference will be the awarding of the BIO Award, which this year is going to Stacy Schiff. TBC will have highlights of her speech and an interview with her in the June edition. In the meantime, you can read some of Schiff’s thoughts on writing her biography of Cleopatra in an interview that ran in October 2010. (This and other past articles are normally only available in the TBC online archives, which is only open to members—another of the benefits of joining BIO if you haven’t already.)

Also during the conference, BIO will give its Biblio Award for services to biographers provided by a librarian or archivist to Heather Cole of Harvard University’s Houghton Library and Wallace Dailey of the Massachusetts Archives. BIO will also honor Holly Van Leuven, the winner of the first BIO/Hazel Rowley Prize for Best Proposal for a First Biography (see story below). Funding for the $2,000 prize comes from money raised at the opening reception of every BIO conference. Finally, the main activities of the conference conclude with the announcing of the winner of the Plutarch Prize, honoring the best biography of 2013 as chosen by BIO members. Look for a complete wrap-up of all conference events in next month’s TBC.