BIO member Nicholas Boggs has been named a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grantee for his work on James Baldwin: A Love Story, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The annual grant of $40,000 is awarded to writers in the process of completing a book of deeply researched and imaginatively composed nonfiction. The grant is intended to encourage original and ambitious projects by giving recipients the additional means to do exacting research and devote time to composition. Learn more here.

Writers Victoria has announced the shortlist for the 2024 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship, awarded annually to an Australian writer for a proposed biographical work. The nine finalists can be found on the Writers Victoria website. The winner will be announced on March 13. Learn more here.

BIO is now accepting applications for its three fellowship programs.  

• The Frances “Frank” Rollin Fellowships is open to writers 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. Judges will award up to two fellowships of $5,000 each. Applications are due February 1, 2024. Learn more here.
• The Robert and Ina Caro Research/Travel Fellowship is open to biographers with a work in progress who wish to receive funding for research trips to archives or to important settings in their subjects’ lives. Judges will award up to four winners, with a minimum award of $2500 each. The deadline for applications is February 1, 2024. Learn more here.
• The Hazel Rowley Prize of $5,000 is given to the Best Book Proposal by a first-time biographer. The deadline for applications is March 1, 2024. Learn more here.

The Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) is offering more than 20 short-term research fellowships. Most grants provide a stipend of $3,000 for four weeks of research at the society’s facilities in Boston, sometime between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025. The fellowships are open to independent scholars, advanced graduate students, and holders of a Ph.D. or the equivalent. Fellowships are geared toward specific topics and MHS holdings. Applications are due March 1, 2024. Learn more here.

Applications for the 2024 AWP Award Series are open until February 28. The series includes the Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction. The latter includes an award of $2,500 and publication by the University of Georgia Press, for one winning book-length manuscript of 150-300 page The AWP Award Series also offers prizes for fiction and poetry. Learn more here.

Author Julian Sancton opened a lawsuit against OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and Microsoft, a major partner of OpenAI, accusing OpenAI of using the text of copyrighted nonfiction books to develop their technology while refusing to compensate the copyright holders. Sancton originally opened the lawsuit at the end of November and, since then, notable biographers and BIO members Kai Bird, Taylor Branch, and Stacy Schiff have joined the lawsuit. All three have won the Pulitzer Prize for their work—Bird and Schiff for biography and Branch for history. The lawsuit states, “Nonfiction authors often spend years conceiving, researching, and writing their creations. While OpenAI and Microsoft refuse to pay nonfiction authors, their AI platform is worth a fortune. The basis of the OpenAI platform is nothing less than the rampant theft of copyrighted works.” Read more here.

The family history research company MyHeritage announced the release of what it calls “groundbreaking” features for its userbase: AI Record Finder and AI Biographer. The Record Finder, it says, “is an interactive, intelligent, free-text chat to help the user locate relevant historical records about a person of interest,” and the Biographer, then, “automatically compiles a rich narrative about an individual’s life using information from historical records that match the person, creating a Wikipedia-like biography about anyone.” While few human biographers would associate a “rich narrative” with a “Wikipedia-like biography,” everyone has a chance to experiment with both tools for free for a limited time before they become part of a “complete” subscription package. Learn more here.

Jon Finkel, who runs the Books & Biceps Substack and is at work on a biography of the wrestler Macho Man, can, but he advises us to be wary of overdoing it on biography. He equated only reading biography to overworking one muscle group at the expense of the rest. “I openly talk about balancing out,” he told The New Yorker, but, at the same time, he couldn’t help but recommend “Candice Millard—every book is incredible.” Read the whole story here.

by Patrick Parr
sold to the University of Massachusetts Press

by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
sold to Yale University Press
by Tanya McKinnon at McKinnon Literary

More titles here.

Marcia Biederman
Kai Bird
Nicholas Boggs
Jonathan Eig
Roy Foster
Nigel Hamilton
John M. Harris Jr.

Arthur Hoyle
Brian Jay Jones
Patrick Parr
Jeffrey D. Simon
Jennifer Skoog
Brad Snyder
Ilyon Woo

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.