Applications for two of BIO’s 2024 awards remain open for submissions.

The Chip Bishop Fellowship awards $2,000 to one recipient for travel expenses, including transportation costs and child care, needed to attend the BIO Conference. The fellowship is supported by a five-year grant from the Capt. Bob Morris Fund, a donor advisory endowment maintained by James McGrath Morris. The registration fee for the annual BIO Conference will also be waived, or it will be refunded if it has already been paid. The fellowship is open to both members and nonmembers. The deadline for applications is April 1, 2024. Learn more here.

The Hazel Rowley Prize awards $5,000 to a first-time biographer whose book proposal shows exceptional merit. Both members and nonmembers of BIO may apply. The deadline for applications is March 1, 2024. Click here for more information.

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 adult readership.” Projects must be under contract with a publisher in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Canada in order to be eligible. The deadline is April 23, 2024. More information is available here.

The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its awards to be given for books published in 2023. One BIO member is a finalist for the biography award (his name appears in bold below). The finalists for biography are:

Jonathan Eig, King: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Gregg Hecimovich, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman’s Narrative (Ecco)

Yunte Huang, Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History (Liveright)

Rachel Shteir, Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disruptor (Yale University Press)

Jonny Steinberg, Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage (Knopf)

The winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards will be announced on March 21. Learn more here.

This year’s National Jewish Book Award for Biography went to Benjamin Balint for Bruno Schulz: An Artist, A Murder, and The Hijacking of History (W. W. Norton & Company). Learn more about the awards here.

The finalists for the 2023 <i>L.A. Times</i> Book Prize for Biography have been announced. They are:

Leah Redmond Chang, Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Jonny Steinberg, Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage (Knopf)

David Waldstreicher, The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Gregg Hecimovich, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative (Ecco)

Elizabeth R. Varon, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South (Simon & Schuster)

The winners of the Book Prizes will be announced on April 19. Learn more here.

As The Mary Sue wrote, “The latest tactic AI has found to make our lives more difficult is writing and publishing fake biographies for deceased individuals.” This phenomenon is visble on Amazon, where dozens of biographies of celebrities in the news at a given moment fill the search results. However, as the outlet went on to explain, the quality of these books springing up on Amazon “is so bad that they hardly get any views or ratings.” Learn more here.

 

It’s not every day that you hear a story of a jazz legend threatening violence against an interviewer, but a rollicking story told by Quincy Troupe, who profiled Miles Davis for Spin magazine (and later went on to write 1989’s Miles: The Autobiography with him), made the rounds in the news this month. After some light verbal sparring in their first conversation, Miles reportedly told Troupe, “Man, you better shut up. I’ll hit you in your mouth.” To which Troupe replied, “I’ll hurt you. I’ll hit you in your mouth; you’ll never play again.” Troupe was in the news for receiving the Los Angeles Review of Books–UCR Department of Creative Writing Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this month. Despite their unconventional dynamic, Davis went on to choose Troupe to work on his autobiography, over other prominent jazz writers like Leonard Feather. Miles: The Autobiography went on to win the American Book Award, in 1990. Learn more here.

BIO member Gabriella Kelly Davies published a detailed and insightful account of the research and writing strategies she employed when writing Breaking through the Pain Barrier: The Extraordinary Life of Dr Michael J. Cousins (Hawkeye Publishing, 2021). In vivid and helpful detail, Kelly Davies shared how she selected from a myriad of choices when structuring her book, driven both by the scrupulous standards she set for herself, as well as by the curve balls life presented to her while working on the project. This included the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in her native Australia and her subject’s developing Parkinson’s disease during the research process. While highly specific in her examples, Kelly Davies has offered food for thought for all biographers. Read the article here.

by Jeff Apter
sold to Citadel

by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil
sold to Gallery
by Steve Troha at Folio Literary Management

More titles here.

Vladimir Alexandrov
Lois Banner
A’Lelia Bundles
Virginia McGee Butler
Mary V. Dearborn
Jonathan Eig
Tanisha C. Ford
Beverly Gage

Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina
Arthur Hoyle
Andrew Meier
Kevin McGruder
Diana P. Parsell
Tamara Payne
Sydney Ladensohn Stern
Barbara Weisberg

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.