Biographers International Organization

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 »

Podcast Episode #73 – Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina

September 17th, 2021

In this week’s episode we interview Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Professor of Biography and English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Working with 19 other authors, her book of edited biographies, Britain’s Black Past, was published by Liverpool University Press in March 2020.  She also has published nine other books, including Carrington: A Life; Black London: Life Before Emancipation; Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden; and Mr. and … Read More »

Podcast Episode #72 – Tamara Payne

September 3rd, 2021

In this week’s episode, we interview Tamara Payne. Working with her late father, the  award-winning and New York-based print journalist Les Payne, Tamara Payne co-wrote The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X. Published in October 2020 by Liveright, this biography of the charismatic and controversial Muslim leader known as Malcolm X earned a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Tamara Payne was interviewed in her home in New York City on… Read More »

Podcast Episode #71 – Dinyar Patel

August 20th, 2021

In this week’s episode, we interview Dinyar Patel, history professor at the S. B. Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai, India, and the author of Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, published in May 2020 by Harvard University Press. Dinyar Patel was interviewed in his Mumbai home on July 15, 2021, via Zoom by writer and BIO member Sonja Williams. https://biographersinternational.org/podcast-player/8088/podcast-episode-71-dinyar-patel.mp3Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 27:37 | Recorded… Read More »

Podcast Episode #69 – Stephen Budiansky

July 23rd, 2021

In this week’s episode, we interview Stephen Budiansky, a veteran historian, biographer, and journalist who has published 15 books, including his current biography, Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel, published by W.W. Norton & Company in May 2021. His writing also has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and he is a Guggenheim Fellow. Budiansky was… Read More »