The 2023 Phi Beta Kappa Book Award winners have been announced. BIO member Deborah Cohen has won the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for “scholarly study that contributes significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity.” Cohen won the award for her book Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On a World at War (Random House). Learn more here.

The shortlist for the 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction was announced on October 8. The list of six titles includes one biography: Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (Random House, November 2022) by Jennifer Homans. Learn more here.

The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization is now accepting submissions for its 2024 book and journalism awards. The “Robert F. Kennedy Book Award” was founded in 1980 with the proceeds from Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s best-selling biography Robert Kennedy and His Times. The prize is awarded to the book that “most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy’s purposes—his concern for the poor and the powerless, his struggle for honest and even-handed justice, his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance, and his faith that a free democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity.” Awards for journalism fitting this same criteria are also given. Book entries are due by January 5, 2024; journalism entries are due by January 12, 2024. Learn more here.

Women Writing Women’s Lives (WWWL), a women’s group dedicated to the writing of women’s lives, is pleased to offer five research awards to women who are furthering the group’s mission. Each recipient will be awarded $3,000 to help defray expenses incurred while working on a memoir or biography of a woman in print or other media such as film, podcast, bibliography, database, or website. Awardees will also receive a one-year membership in WWWL. The deadline to apply is November 3. Learn more here.

The Authors Guild, in collaboration with 36 other publishing-related organizations including BIO, Penguin Random House, PEN America, and the African American Literature Book Club, has released what it calls “the most comprehensive author income study to date in the United States.” Based on the responses of 5,699 published authors who participated, the survey found the following: 1) The median annual income for biographers is $3,500; 2) The combined median book and author-related income is $9,200; 3) And, the median author income for fulltime authors is $10,000 per year. Read more about the results here.

That’s what many authors, readers, and pundits are wondering in the wake of the release of Going Infinite, Michael Lewis’s biography of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange and its sister firm Alameda Research. The idea that Lewis may have lost too much psychic distance from his subject hit the mainstream media following the 60 Minutes interview Lewis gave to kick off his book promo. Daniel Kuhn, a prominent writer and editor in the cryptocurrency space, said that the appearance signaled Going Infinite “would be a hagiography of Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the crypto exchange, and one that raised serious questions about the veteran author’s role in this long nightmare.” Learn more about the biographical controversy here.

BIO member Ruth Franklin, who has written for The New Yorker for over 20 years, shared her writing process for her article “Frankenstein’s Daughters,” which appeared in the magazine on October 9. For would-be essayists and the merely curious, she describes her 11 steps—starting with conception and timing and then winding through pitching, research, writing, and publication. Learn more here.

Do you maintain a Substack or other regular, subscriber-driven newsletter for your personal writing or other work? If so, we would love to learn about it. Please reply to this email with a link to your newsletter.

by William R. Cross
sold to Farrar, Straus and Giroux
by Carolyn Savarese at Calligraph

by Jane Dismore
sold to The History Press

by Alex Vernon
sold to St. Martin’s Press
by Timothy Wojcik at Levine Greenberg Rostan

More titles HERE

Neil Baldwin
Tom Chaffin
William R. Cross
Jane Dismore
Jonathan Eig
Tanisha C. Ford
Caleb J. Gayle
Aleta George
Will Hermes
Stephen H. Grant
Dana Greene
Arthur Hoyle
Angela V. John
Christopher Klein
Eileen Martin
Kevin McGruder

Jon Meacham
Kenneth Miller
Lisa Napoli
Steve Paul
Raquel Ramsey
Stacy Schiff
Jennifer Skoog
Sydney Ladensohn Stern
David O. Stewart
Rachel L. Swarns
Marlene Trestman
Alex Vernon
Sonja Williams
Susan Wilson
Gretchen Woelfle

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.