90 Seconds to Midnight: A HiroshimaSurvivor’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. … Read More »
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… Read More »
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,… Read More »
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 … Read More »
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… Read More »
Thisaward-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… Read More »
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 … Read More »
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), wonthe 2022 Society of Midland Authors Award. He also co-edited a collection of scholarly… Read More »
