BIO member Steve Kemper’s Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor (Mariner Books) has received the 2023 Dillon Award from the American Academy of Diplomacy for the year’s best book about “the Practice of American Diplomacy.” Learn more here. 

The winners of the 2023 Canadian Jewish Literary Awards were announced on October 15. Biographer Michael Posner won the Award for Special Achievement for his trilogy—Leonard Cohen: Untold Stories (Simon & Schuster)—the final book of which was published in December 2022. Watch Posner’s acceptance speech here. 

BIO is now accepting applications for its three fellowship programs.  

• The Frances “Frank” Rollin Fellowship awards $5,000 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. This fellowship also provides the recipients with a year’s membership in BIO, registration to the annual BIO Conference, and publicity through BIO’s marketing channels. The fellowship is open to all biographers anywhere in the world who are writing in English, who are working on a biography of an African American figure (or figures), and who are at any stage in the writing of a book-length biography. Applications are due February 1, 2024. More information about the fellowship is available here. 
• The Robert and Ina Caro Research/Travel Fellowship is open to BIO members with a work in progress, who can apply to receive funding for research trips to archives or to important settings in their subjects’ lives. The deadline for applications is February 1, 2024. Learn more here. 
• The Hazel Rowley Prize rewards a first-time biographer with: funding ($5,000 award); a careful reading from an established agent; a year’s membership in BIO (including registration to the annual BIO Conference); and publicity through BIO’s marketing channels. The prize is open to all first-time biographers anywhere in the world: who are writing in English; working on a biography that has not been commissioned, contracted, or self-published; and have never published a book-length biography, autobiography, history, or work of narrative nonfiction. The deadline for applications is March 1, 2024. Click here for more information. 

The Leon Levy Center for Biography offers four resident fellowships and one Sloan Fellowship for a biography on a figure from science or technology. Awards include writing space at the CUNY Graduate Center, full access to research facilities, research assistance, and a stipend of $72,000. The period of the residencies is September through May of each year. Fellows devote their time to their projects and participate in monthly seminars and in the public events of the Leon Levy Center for Biography—including the annual lecture and annual conference—and they are encouraged to join in the dynamic intellectual community of the Graduate Center. The deadline to apply is January 4, 2024. Learn more here. 

Applications are now being accepted for the Steinbeck Fellows Program at San José State University. The fellowship offers emerging writers of any age and background the opportunity to pursue a significant writing project during their fellowship tenure. The emphasis of the program is on helping writers who have had some success but have not published extensively, and whose promising work would be aided by the financial support and sponsorship of the Center For Steinbeck Studies and the university’s creative writing program. The fellowship includes a stipend of $15,000. The creative writing fellowship does not require that there be any direct connection between your work and Steinbeck’s. Relocation is not required. The deadline to apply is January 5, 2024. Learn more here. 

The J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards recognize excellence in nonfiction that exemplifies the literary grace and commitment to serious research and social concern that characterized the work of the award’s Pulitzer Prize-winning namesake, J. Anthony Lukas, who died in 1997. Four awards are given: two J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Awards, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, and the Mark Lynton History Prize. Applications for 2024 prizes are open until December 7. More information is available here. 

The Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia offers two-year fellowships at the pre-doctoral and post-doctoral levels. The fellowships are designed to facilitate the writing of dissertations or manuscripts and provide successful applicants the opportunity to discuss and exchange works in progress both with each other and the larger intellectual community of the university. Preference is given to applicants whose research is substantially completed. Pre-doctoral fellows receive $30,000 annually; post-doctoral fellows receive $50,000 annually. The deadline to apply is December 1. Learn more here. 

It’s been a strange, few years for Simon & Schuster. Its former parent company, Paramount, tried to sell it to rival publishing house Penguin Random House. Then, in 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a lawsuit against the deal on the basis of antitrust laws, which the department won last year. Now, Simon & Schuster, the home of a slate of top biographers, is an independent company for the first time since 1975, by virtue of being sold to the private equity company KKR. Learn more about the deal here. 

Say you write and publish a biography . . . would you consider rewriting and republishing it 30 years later? That’s exactly what Michael Azerrad, author of the first Nirvana biography, Come As You Are, has done. The book, launched at the end of last month as The Amplified Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana (HarperOne), corrects errors made in the first edition that were never fact-checked—including tall tales that Kurt Cobain duped Azerrad into publishing. The backstory is enough to raise a biographer’s eyebrows. Learn more here. 

If you’re reading this newsletter, you likely know all the broad brushstrokes involved in writing a biography. But in this piece for The Irish News, Paul Clements, biographer of the writer Jan Morris, so eloquently describes the “‘intense compositional effort’ of research, writing, rewriting, editing, indexing” that you’re likely to pick up a few ideas or some inspiration from his essay. Read it here. 

A thank you to all who responded to the call in our last edition of The Insider for your Substack newsletters info. Our running list so far includes:  

• Ghost Stories, by Ruth Franklin  
• Open Book, by Amy Reading  
• Letters from Anne, by Anne Boyd Rioux

by Devoney Looser 
sold to St. Martin’s Press 
by Stacey Glick at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret 

by Adam Henig
sold to Rowman & Littlefield

by Carl Rollyson
sold to University of Virginia Press

More titles HERE

Peter Benjaminson
Susan Blumberg-Kason
Mary Ann Caws
Stephen Dando-Collins
John A. “Jack” Farrell
Danny Fingeroth
Beverly Gage
Michael Gately
Lyndall Gordon
Adam Henig
Eve Kahn
Kitty Kelley

Steve Kemper
Aidan Levy
Devoney Looser
Eugene L. Meyer
Edward O’Shea
Raquel Ramsey
Alan K. Rode
Barbara D. Savage
Stacy Schiff
Jennifer Skoog
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.