Biographers International Organization

Podcast #212 – Carol Sklenicka & Yepoka Yeebo

April 11th, 2025

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… Read More »

Podcast #211 – Heather Clark & Stephen Enniss

April 4th, 2025

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… Read More »

Podcast #210 – Linda Leavell & Natalie Dykstra

March 28th, 2025

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 … Read More »

Podcast #209 – James McGrath Morris

March 21st, 2025

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 Wa… Read More »

Podcast #208 – Ray Anthony Shepard

March 14th, 2025

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,… Read More »

Podcast #193 – Susan Blumberg-Kason

November 1st, 2024

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 … Read More »

Podcast #189 – Katie Gee Salisbury

October 4th, 2024

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… Read More »

Podcast #185 – Rachel Kousser

September 6th, 2024

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, … Read More »