Biographers International Organization

Podcast #169 – Nicholas L. Syrett

March 15th, 2024

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… Read More »

Podcast #168 – J. C. Hallman

March 8th, 2024

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… Read More »

Podcast #167 – Rachel Shteir

March 1st, 2024

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… Read More »

Podcast #161 – Brad Snyder

January 19th, 2024

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… Read More »

Podcast #160 – Yunte Huang

January 12th, 2024

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.… Read More »

Podcast #156 – Beverly Gage

December 15th, 2023

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,… Read More »

Podcast #152 – Mary Ann Caws

November 17th, 2023

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… Read More »

Podcast #148 – Paul Fisher

October 20th, 2023

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)… Read More »