The New America Foundation has announced its inaugural class of Us@250 Fellows. The purpose of the fellowships is to: “provide funding, resources, and community for practitioners engaged in storytelling projects that seek to tell a fuller, more comprehensive American narrative; create connection across differences; and expand on our concept of American culture and identity.” Among the members of the inaugural class is BIO member Alexis Coe. Learn more here. 

Australia’s National Biography Award, presented by the State Library of New South Wales, has been awarded to Ann-Marie Priest for her biography My Tongue Is My Own: A Life of Gwen Harwood (La Trobe University Press – Black Inc., 2022). The senior judge of the prize said, “Priest has captured completely the sprite-like nature of one of Australia’s finest poets; a woman who used a fierce intellect and penchant for trickery to upend dusty institutions that steadfastly refused to see women as capable or talented.” Learn more here. 

MacDowell is now accepting applications for its Spring-Summer 2024 Residency program. About 300 artists in seven disciplines are awarded MacDowell Fellowships each year, and the sole criterion for acceptance is “artistic excellence.” There are no residency fees. To open these residencies to the broadest possible community of artists, need-based stipends and travel reimbursement grants are available. The Literature Fellowship is open to biographers. The deadline for applications is September 10. Learn more here. 

The Margaret Fuller Society seeks to form a panel for the March 2024 “C19 Conference” in Pasadena, California, titled: “Refusing Foreclosures and Endings: 19th-Century Women Writers’ Defiance, Persistence, and Resilience.” The society is currently accepting 250-word abstracts about Margaret Fuller, or other 19th-century women, pertaining to such topics as: “untimely ends;” “ways around, through, or under seemingly insuperable barriers—including structural racism;” and other interpretations of the theme. Applications are due August 26. Learn more here. 

The National Humanities Center, based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, offers residential fellowships for the academic year to scholars with a doctorate or equivalent credentials. (Fellows do not have to be affiliated with a college or university.) The fellowships come with a stipend that is individually determined based on the fellow. The deadline to apply for the 2024–2025 cycle is October 5. Learn more here.  

Henrietta Lacks—who gained world-renown from the biography The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Crown, 2010)—was a young Black woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951, but cells taken from her biopsy without her permission proved unique, and have been used in medical breakthroughs ever since. The story is back in the news because the descendants of Lacks have settled a lawsuit with the biomedical company Thermo Fisher Scientific for improperly profiting from Lacks’s cells. This has revived some interest in the fact that Skloot, Lacks’s biographer, took the unusual step of setting up a foundation so that profits from her biography could benefit the Lacks family—which they have for over a decade. Information about Skloot’s set-up, which may be of interest to biographers considering similar arrangements, is available here. 

Author and publishing consultant Jane Friedman’s name is familiar to readers of BIO’s The Insider, as it often appears in the “Writer’s Life” section, due to her excellent blog about all things writing and publishing. Recently, however, her name started showing up in a place that, in her own words, makes her angry: on the cover of A.I.-generated books being sold on Amazon by bad actors claiming she wrote them. After a great struggle, Friedman got Amazon to remove the fake books from both Amazon and Goodreads. You can read more about the ordeal, and how it may affect more writers going forward, here. 

BIO member Ruth Franklin has written about how a writer can endure the uncomfortable period following the submission of a first book draft and before being able to begin revisions. She writes, “I’m in limbo. The first draft of my book manuscript, as I triumphantly told you last month, is complete. The research and the creative work are over, mostly. But the next phase—revising the book and seeing it through to publication—hasn’t really begun. I’m still waiting for feedback from one reader. A final decision needs to be made about the publication date. And there are a million odds and ends to tie up, not the least of which is securing permission to quote from all the unpublished sources—mainly correspondence—that I hope to use in the book.” Then, as Franklin explains, she decided to get comfortable being in limbo. Read more about her experiences here. 

Writing for The Common Reader, Henry Oliver considers how much stock biographers can put in the holographic writings of our subjects and provides some criteria we might use to decide how trustworthy our subjects are when they talk about themselves. “I think the sensible position is that of taking people at their word,” he states, “while trying to judge how strongly you take their claim.” Read more here. 

by Sara Fitzgerald 
sold to Rowman & Littlefield 
by Rita Rosenkranz at Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency 

by Tilar J. Mazzeo 
sold to St. Martin’s Press 
by Stacey Glick at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret 

More titles HERE

Paul V. Allen 
Patricia Auspos 
Peter Benjaminson 
Kai Bird 
Alexis Coe 
Ruth Franklin 
Sara Fitzgerald 
Heather Dune Macadam 

Megan Marshall
Eugene L. Meyer
Alec Nevala-Lee 
Anne Boyd Rioux 
Ray Anthony Shepard 
Celia Stahr 
Rachel Swarns 
Janet Wallach 

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.