The 2023 PEN Literary Award winners were announced on March 2. The winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography was Dan Charnas for Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm (MCD, 2022). To see the complete list of PEN Literary Award winners, go here.

Beverly Gage has won a 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History & Diplomacy for G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century (Viking). The prizes, which include an award of $10,000 each, are bestowed annually by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. The jury said of G-Man: “Beverly Gage’s stunning biography of J. Edgar Hoover . . . both perfects and transcends its genre. The first biography about Hoover written in 30 years, Gage has done exhaustive research in recently released materials that earlier biographers could not access and deftly used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as well. The result of this hard sleuthing, as well as of Gage’s formidable interpretive skill, is a Hoover pulled back from the villainous caricature that we thought we knew. . . . Villainizing Hoover lets the rest of us off the hook, Gage concludes, skillfully shifting her account from one man’s life to a history of the 20th century writ large, and never for a moment losing command of her vast subject.” Learn more here.

On February 22, the finalists for the 43rd Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced. The finalists for the Biography Prize for a work published in 2022 are:

• Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality (Vintage)
• Beverly Gage, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century (Viking)
• Jennifer Homans, Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (Random House)
• David Maraniss, Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe (Simon & Schuster)
• Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Viking)

The winner will be announced Friday, April 21, at University of Southern California’s Bovard Auditorium, the evening before the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

The 2023 Spur Awards bestowed by the Western Writers of America have been announced. The winner in the category of Best Western Biography is Before Billy the Kid: The Boy Behind the Legendary Outlaw (TwoDot Press, 2022) by Melody Groves. To see the finalists for the biography prize, click here.

The Chip Bishop Fellowship awards $1,000 to one recipient for travel expenses, including transportation costs and child care, needed to attend the BIO Conference. The deadline for applications is April 1, 2023. Learn more 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, 2023. More information is available here.

The Associated Press reported that Yao Wentian, 83, a Hong Kong-based publisher, was released from prison in China after serving a 10-year sentence. While the official cause of his incarceration was said to be “smuggled building materials,” a San Francisco-based human rights group said the publisher’s work on a biography of Xi Jinping was “almost certainly the reason for his imprisonment.” Read more here.

Andrew Lycett, a biographer of Ian Fleming, has spoken out against the decision made by the Ian Fleming Estate to cut offensive language from Fleming’s James Bond books, in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of the publication of Casino Royale. The move is similar to a recent decision by the Roald Dahl Story Company, which manages the texts of the late Roald Dahl, to revise some of Dahl’s children’s novels to remove offensive language. Lycett said, “It’s never a good look to change what an author originally wrote. It smacks of censorship, and there’s seldom much mileage in that.” Read more here.

Literary Hub published a controversial essay by Helen Betya Rubinstein entitled “Against Copyediting: Is It Time to Abolish the Other Department of Corrections?” The heaviest argument levied against copyediting was: “It’s clear that copyediting as it’s typically practiced is a white supremacist project, that is, not only for the particular linguistic forms it favors and upholds, which belong to the cultures of whiteness and power, but for how it excludes or erases the voices and styles of those who don’t or won’t perform this culture.” Read more of the reasons given by Rubinstein for abolishing copyediting here.

In response to Rubinstein’s essay above, copyeditor Molly Rookwood published a rejoinder for the Editorial Arts Academy, exploring the “thoughtful and careful” aspects of copyediting and the myriad ways modern copyediting supports and uplifts a writer’s voice, as opposed to stifling it. She writes, “Editors found their careers for a reason (and I promise, it was not for the money). We love language and its evolution, and we are not fighting it. When I work with an author, I am on their team, not playing as their opposition. I don’t count mistakes as points against them. I am not removing their voice and supplanting their style with my own. A good copyeditor wants writers to succeed.” Read Rookwood’s essay here.

Reader response: What have your experiences with copyediting been like? Let us know here. Also, shoutout to Margaret Moore Booker, the valiant copyeditor of this newsletter, for her invaluable support and expertise!

by Margena A. Christian
sold to Hachette Books
by Joseph Perry at Perry Literary

by Eric G. Wilson
sold to The University of Chicago Press
by Matt McGowan at Frances Goldin Literary Agency

More titles HERE

Debby Applegate
Neil Baldwin
Lois Banner
Patti Bender
Kai Bird
Mark Borthwick
Robert Caro
Margena A. Christian
Deborah Cohen
Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Jeffrey Frank
Beverly Gage
Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos

Candice Shy Hooper
Megan Marshall
Eugene Meyer
Lydia Moland
James McGrath Morris
Lisa Napoli
Hank Nuwer
Diana P. Parsell
Steve Paul
Betsy Prioleau
Raquel Ramsey
Carl Rollyson
Susan Ronald
Jennifer Skoog

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.