Biographers International Organization

Podcast #132 – Ashley Brown

May 5th, 2023

This week we interview Ashley Brown, assistant history professor and the Allan H. Selig Chair in Sport and Society in U.S. History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her biography, Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson, was published in February 2023 by Oxford University Press. Gibson was the first African American to compete and win championship titles at Wimbledon, as well at the United States, French, and Australian Opens. She was also… Read More »

Podcast Episode #119 – Wanda Hendricks

February 3rd, 2023

This week we interview Wanda A. Hendricks, Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of South Carolina and author of The Life of Madie Hall Xuma: Black Women’s Global Activism During Jim Crow and Apartheid, published by the University of Illinois Press (UIP) in October 2022. Hendricks has served as the National Director of the Association of Black Women Historians, and senior editor of the three-volume Black Women In America: Second Edition, published by Oxford… Read More »

Podcast Episode #112 – Anastasia Curwood

December 16th, 2022

This week we interview Anastasia Curwood, Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and author of Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics, scheduled for publication by the University of North Carolina Press in January 2023. Curwood has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. Her first book, Stormy Weather: Middle-Class … Read More »

Podcast Episode #110 – Mark Clague

December 2nd, 2022

This week we interview Mark Clague, author of O Say Can You Hear: A Cultural Biography of The Star-Spangled Banner, published by W.W. Norton & Company in June 2022. Clague serves as Professor of Musicology, Arts Leadership, and American Culture at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, where he also serves as an associate dean. His other anthem-related publications include the recording Poets & Patriots: A Tuneful History of The … Read More »

Podcast Episode #104 – Marko Perko

October 21st, 2022

This week we interview Marko Perko, a veteran writer and the co-author (with psychiatrist Stephen M. Stahl) of Tesla: His Tremendous and Troubled Life. This biography of Nikola Tesla—the Serbian American engineer who helped to create our modern world with his wide-ranging inventions, discoveries, and patents, including alternating current (AC)—was published by Prometheus Books in May 2022. Perko has written for and edited numerous publications, and he has worked as a columnist, speechwriter, composer,… Read More »

Podcast Episode #97 – Mark Lee Gardner

July 8th, 2022

This week we interview award winning writer Mark Lee Gardner. His latest biography, The Earth is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation, was published by Mariner Books in June 2022.Gardner’s previous books, Rough Riders, To Hell on a Fast Horse and Shot All to Hell, received multiple honors, including a Spur Award from Western Writers of America. An authority on the American… Read More »

Podcast Episode #89 – Alejandro Madrid

March 25th, 2022

This week we interview Alejandro Madrid, an award-winning Cornell University musicologist who specializes in music and expressive culture from Latin America and Latinxs in the United States. He has authored more than a half dozen books, including his latest, Tania Léon’s Stride. A Polyrhythmic Life, published by the University of Illinois Press in December 2021. Tania Léon, now in her late 70s, is a sought-after composer, conductor, educator, and tireless advocate for the arts.… Read More »

Podcast Episode #86 – Tyrone McKinley Freeman

February 11th, 2022

This week we interview Tyrone McKinley Freeman, an award-winning associate professor of Philanthropic Studies and director of undergraduate programs at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. His latest book, Madam C.J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving: Black Women’s Philanthropy During Jim Crow, was published by the University of Illinois Press in September 2020. His work has appeared or been cited in the New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, TIME, Harvard … Read More »