Biographers International Organization

Podcast #205 – Mary Frances Phillips

February 21st, 2025

This historian and author’s Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins, was published in January 2025 by New York University Press. It examines the life and legacy of one of the longest-serving women members of the Black Panther Party. Huggins also is an educator, poet, mother, and a former political prisoner. As a first-time biographer, Mary Phillips serves as an associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois,… Read More »

Podcast #203 – Samantha Ege

February 7th, 2025

This award-winning musicologist, internationally recognized concert pianist, and London-based popular public speaker talks about her first book, South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene, published by the University of Illinois Press in November 2024. Ege is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, and she is a leading scholar of African American composer Florence B. Price within the context of the Black Chicago Renaissance (1930-1950) and Black women’s dynamic… Read More »

Podcast #201 – Mark Clifford

January 24th, 2025

This author’s biography, The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic, was published by Simon & Schuster in December 2024. Clifford is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, and he served as the executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council and as a board director at Next Digital, the Hong Kong media giant founded and majority-owned by Jimmy… Read More »

Podcast #198 – Pamela D. Toler

December 6th, 2024

Historian and author Pamela D. Toler’s latest book, The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany, was published in August 2024 by Beacon Press. In addition to this biography of Sigrid Schultz, the fearless woman who headed the Chicago Tribune’s Berlin bureau from 1925 to 1941, Toler has authored ten books of popular history for children and adults, including Heroines of Mercy Street: Real Nurses of the Civil War… Read More »

Podcast #191 – Patti Hartigan

October 18th, 2024

This week we interview Patti Hartigan, award-winning journalist and author of August Wilson: A Life. This biography, Hartigan’s first, about the legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who powerfully and poetically chronicled African American life in the 20th century, was published in August 2023 by Simon & Schuster. Hartigan has had a long career at the Boston Globe where she served as arts reporter, drama critic, and cultural columnist. Her work has appeared in numerous publications,… Read More »

Podcast #188 – Kenneth Miller

September 27th, 2024

This week we interview award-winning journalist and author Kenneth Miller about his first biography, Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep. It was published in October 2023 by Hachette Books. Miller is a contributing editor for Discover, and his work has appeared in Time, Life, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Aeon, and many other publications. Miller’s honors include the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine… Read More »

Podcast #178 – Judith Tick

May 17th, 2024

This week we interview Judith Tick, a Matthews Distinguished Professor Emerita at Northeastern University in Boston, and an award-winning author. Her latest book, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song, explores the life of one of the 20th century’s greatest jazz vocalists. It was published by W. W. Norton and Company in January of this year. In addition, Tick’s co-edited anthology (with Jane Bowers), Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, … Read More »

Podcast #158 – Justin Martin

December 29th, 2023

This week, we interview author Justin Martin, who specializes in meticulously researched and engagingly delivered American history books. His most recent, A Fierce Glory: Antietam, the Desperate Battle That Saved Lincoln and Doomed Slavery, was published by Da Capo Press in September 2018. This group biography is about Antietam—a turning point in the Civil War—in which Martin emphasizes character development over troop movements and portrays key figures both on and off the battlefield on that… Read More »