Katherine Rundell, the author of Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), has won the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, a British prize for the best nonfiction book written in the English language. Rundell was awarded £50,000. Read more about the prize here.

Catherine Haig has won the 2022 Tony Lothian Prize, for an un-commissioned proposal by a first-time biographer, for her planned book An Unfinished Life: Lady Gwendolen Cecil. The prize was accompanied by an award of £2,000. The proposed biography will tell the story of the second and “cleverest” daughter of Lord Salisbury. The prize is administered by The Biographers’ Club. Read more here.

BIO is now accepting applications for its three fellowship programs. Please note that the amounts have increased from $3,000 to $5,000 for both the Rollin Fellowship and Rowley Prize, and the number of recipients has increased from one to two for the Rollin Fellowship and from two to four for the Caro Fellowship. These increased benefits, which BIO will sustain for at least five years, are thanks to gifts from Kitty Kelley and other generous friends of BIO.

• The Frances “Frank” Rollin Fellowship awards $5,000 each to two authors working on a biographical work about an African American figure (or figures), whose story provides a significant contribution to our understanding of the Black experience. Applications are due February 1, 2023. More information about the fellowship is available here.
• The Robert and Ina Caro Research/Travel Fellowship awards funding to as many as four authors working on biographical works for research trips to archives or to important settings in their subjects’ lives. The deadline for applications is February 1, 2023. Learn more here.
• The Hazel Rowley Prize awards $5,000 to a first-time biographer whose book proposal shows exceptional merit. The deadline for applications is March 1, 2023. Click here for more information.

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is offering short-term research fellowships to engage in graduate-level, post-doctoral, and independent research in the arts and humanities, to scholars who are based outside of the metropolitan New York area. Fellowship stipends are $1,000 per week for a minimum of two and a maximum of four concurrent weeks. Applications are due January 23, 2023. Additional information is available here. 

The Massachusetts Historical Society will award at least two long-term MHS-NEH fellowships for the academic year 2023-2024. The stipend, governed by an NEH formula, is $5,000 per month for a minimum of four months and a maximum of 12 months. The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2023. Learn more here. 

While the New York Times Bestsellers List follows from a simple premise—books that sell the most copies will be included—the formula the newspaper uses for tabulating copies sold has long been the topic of speculation. While the entire picture is still unknown, publishing insiders recently spoke to Sophie Vershbow for Esquire to share what they know for sure is influencing the rankings these days: bulk sales, presales, and even a new “performance-driven [marketing] agency” that claims it can get books on the list for its clients. Read more here. 

In Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, a new book on the late Queen Elizabeth II by Gyles Brandreth, who is thought to be a close friend of the late Prince Philip, it appears a biographer has broken news to the world. Brandreth writes that Queen Elizabeth suffered from a rare form of blood cancer in the last months of her life, a detail that was not released at the time of her death. While the palace has neither confirmed nor denied the account, it appears that royal insiders may have considered a biographer (and a family friend) the more dignified outlet for such a significant revelation, over the media outlets (largely consisting of tabloid newspapers) that participate in the royal rota. Read more here.

In response to the list published in the “Writer’s Life” column in the November Insider regarding great books on the subject of writing biography, several BIO members sent in more suggestions.

Here they are:

• Biography: An Annotated Bibliography, by Carl Rollyson
• Biography: The Craft and the Calling, by Catherine Drinker Bowen
• Body Parts: Essays on Life Writing, by Hermione Lee
• The Biographer’s Craft, by Milton Lomask

To see the complete list compiled so far, go here. Special thanks to BIO members Mary Chitty, Vincent DiGirolamo, Dona Munker, Carl Rollyson, and Sam Rubin, as well as the panelists of the “Bio Hacks” panel at the 2022 BIO Conference, for the ideas for this list!

For the New York Sun, BIO member Carl Rollyson explored the contours of “prosopography,” better known as group biography, and how the form allows the writer some freedom from the daunting task of making all the parts of a single subject’s life equally interesting. The essay also explores how the most central figure of every biography may in fact be its author. Read the article here.

by Judy Pearson 
sold to Mayo Clinic Press 
by Dani Segelbaum at Carol Mann Agency 

More titles HERE

Patti Bender 
Iris Jamahl Dunkle 
Lyndall Gordon 
Arthur Hoyle 
Kitty Kelley 
Linda Leavell 
Aidan Levy 
Andrew Lownie 

Kevin McGruder 
Pamela Newkirk 
Edward J. O’Shea 
Judy Pearson 
Nick Reynolds 
Jennifer Skoog 
Stefanie Van Steelandt 
Eric K. Washington 
Sonja Williams 

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.