BIO member Beverly Gage has won the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography for G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century (Viking). Committee Chair Elizabeth Taylor, speaking on behalf of the National Book Critics Circle, said of G-Man: “In this astounding biography, Gage has miraculously untangled those contradictions and our own paradoxical national story involving American anxieties over security, masculinity, and race.” She further noted that “with propulsive energy and elan . . . Gage weaves revelations from new archival discoveries and nuanced historical interpretations.” The complete list of National Book Critics Circle award winners is available here.

The winners and finalists of the 2023 J. Anthony Lukas Prizes, given by the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard to honor the best American nonfiction writing, were announced on March 21. Among the works honored was one biography: Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa’s His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Viking, May 2022), which was named the finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. Information about all the Lukas Prize winners is available here.

On April 5, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the 171 recipients of Guggenheim Fellowships for 2023. Among them are two BIO members. BIO Board member Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the category of “Intellectual & Cultural History.” Gerzina is the author of several 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 Mrs. Price: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Family Moved Out of Slavery and into Legend. Working with 19 other authors, her book of edited biographies, Britain’s Black Past, was published by Liverpool University Press in March 2020. David Greenberg was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the category of “Biography.” He is the author most recently of Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency, as well as Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image; Calvin Coolidge; and Presidential Doodles. Complete information about the Guggenheim Fellowships is available here.

PEN America is accepting applications for its Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History. Two authors will receive grants of $15,000 for unpublished works in progress that use oral history to illuminate an event, individual, place, or movement. Oral history must be a significant component of the project and its research. Applications for the 2024 cycle will be open from April 1 to June 1. Apply here.

The Whiting Foundation is accepting applications for its Creative Nonfiction Grants. Up to 10 writers will receive grants of $40,000 each. Applicants must be “in the process of completing a book-length work of deeply researched and imaginatively composed nonfiction for a general readership.” Projects must be under contract with a publisher in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Canada to be eligible. The deadline is April 25. More information is available here.

The VCCA is offering three, fully funded fellowships that may be of interest to biographers. The Goldfarb Family Fellowship is open to writers of creative nonfiction and offers them a two-week stay at the Mt. San Angelo estate in Virginia. The Barbara Crooker Caregiving Fellowship offers a two-week residency to an artist in any discipline (including writing) who is a caregiver to an ill or disabled spouse, child, or other family member. The 50th Anniversary Fellowship for Writers of Color offers a two-week fellowship to artists of color who have not previously been in residence at the VCCA. The deadline for all fellowships is May 15. Learn more here.

Applications for fellowships at the Library of Congress’ Kluge Center will open on April 15. Scholars who have received a terminal advanced degree within the past seven years in the humanities, social sciences, or in a professional field are eligible to apply. Fellowships are offered for periods from four to 11 months at a stipend of $5,000 per month for residential research at the Library of Congress. Learn more here.

For Electric Literature, Suzanne Berne wrote about how the most compelling characters—fictional and nonfictional—are often those who either think they know themselves well and don’t, or don’t understand themselves at all. She said, “Characters always have problems at the beginning of a story, for example, but rarely do they have a firm understanding of those problems, or themselves, for the simple reason that misconceptions, ambiguities, and, above all, secrets, create drama. ‘What did the president know, and when did he know it?’ Senator Howard Baker’s famous question during the Watergate hearings captured the power of uncertainty. If a character doesn’t know something or is hiding something, readers want that something discovered and explained. We want the facts. We need them in order to feel that the story has been told.” Read more of her ideas about crafting the stories of complicated characters here.

by Alec Nevala-Lee
sold to W. W. Norton & Company
by David Halpern at The Robbins Office

by Laurence Leamer
sold to Putnam
by David Halpern at The Robbins Office

More titles HERE

Debby Applegate
Kai Bird
Beverly Gage
Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina
David Greenberg
Arthur Hoyle
Kitty Kelley
Linda Leavell

Kevin McGruder
Andrew Meier
Alec Nevala-Lee
Diana P. Parsell
Shelley Puhak
Raquel Ramsey
Jennifer Skoog
David O. Stewart

Whatever state your biography’s in—vague idea, proposal, well underway—BIO’s experienced biographers can help. BIO offers a one-hour coaching session via phone or email for the member discounted rate of $60. (Coaches may charge more for subsequent hours.) Learn more about the program here.

Are you a student, or do you know one who is interested in biography? BIO now has a special student membership rate. Visit the BIO website to find out more.