With both of those possibilities in mind, I have compiled a special roundup of soundbites from recent episodes of the Bio podcast, which is produced with great dedication and talent by a committee of BIO members. Whether you are comfortably at home or on the go, you may find it a good opportunity to listen to some inspired thinkers and writers discussing the craft we hold so dear.

While we reflect on the people, places, and activities we are grateful for, I offer a friendly reminder on behalf of the organization that Giving Tuesday is November 30. Please give to BIO as generously as you can. I am wishing you and yours peace, health, and good spirits.

Best Regards,

Holly Van Leuven

David Hajdu and John Carey, authors of A Revolution in Three Acts: The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay and Julian Eltinge

Hajdu and Carey were interviewed by Eric K. Washington about their innovative group biography of three important figures from Vaudeville. Carey, an illustrator, contributed the types of illustration panels frequently seen in graphic novels and comic books. Hajdu explained that this allowed the collaborators to “slow down and linger” on dramatic moments. At the same time, “comics gave us a kind of license to dramatize events that aren’t documented. We know, for instance, that Julian Eltinge collected antiques. We can have a few comics panels where he’s shopping for antiques…we can give life to the historical fact…and readers know, ‘Those are in a comics panel and there’s word balloons now,’ so they take that to be a reenactment. Something like seeing the reenactments in a documentary. …It’s a convention of the form.” FULL EPISODE

Ty Seidule, author of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

Ty Seidule grew up revering Robert E. Lee. From his southern childhood to his service in the U.S. Army, every part of his life reinforced the Lost Cause myth: that Lee was the greatest man who ever lived, and that the Confederates were underdogs who lost the Civil War with honor. Now, as a retired brigadier general and Professor Emeritus of History at West Point, his view has radically changed. From a soldier, a scholar, and a southerner, he believes that American history demands a reckoning. Kitty Kelley interviewed Seidule, who said: “I don’t want to have less history. I want to have more. I want to have those stories that were hidden from me as a child growing up in Virginia and Georgia to be talked about. …I raised my right hand, gave the oath of office, and became an Army officer. And that wasn’t my identity when I first came in. I was a Virginia gentleman. …I went into the archives and what I found is what changed me. What I found was that in the nineteenth century, West Point was an anti-Confederate monument. It banished Confederates as traitors, and I had never thought of them as that. Our cemeteries did not have any Confederates. Our memorials didn’t have them. And so then I said, ‘When did they come?’ They came in the 1930s and 1950s and 1970s. That’s when Confederate monuments came to West Point. It was a reaction to integration. And that made me so angry…that I had bought into this lie. …I would take [my students] around West Point and show them the artifacts. And once I showed them these artifacts, it changed their minds pretty quickly. Because the evidence is so overwhelming.” FULL EPISODE

Kevin McGruder, author of Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem

During the 1990s, Kevin McGruder served as the director of real estate development for the Abyssinian Development Corporation, a nonprofit church-based organization in Harlem, and he wrote a book about race and real estate in Harlem. In Philip Payton, McGruder’s first biography, he tells the life story of the Black real estate entrepreneur who played a central role in Harlem’s transformation during the early twentieth century. McGruder told interviewer Eric K. Washington: “When Payton and his other colleagues buy property, they’re successful in doing that, and Booker T. Washington sends a telegram to Payton congratulating him on his efforts, he says, for the race and for your investments. That puts Payton on the map. …I would say to approach it [research] carefully and think about what resources you’re going to have available. That if somebody didn’t leave records, kind of being creative in thinking about where one can find that person in other records.” FULL EPISODE

Molly Ball, author of Pelosi

John A. Farrell interviewed Ball, who said: “The one sort of big overarching element of the narrative that didn’t fall into place until relatively late in the reporting process was the sort of final arc. You know, mine is not the first biography of Nancy Pelosi. …She’s a tough interview. She doesn’t give a lot away. She’s very on message. Maybe some of this is very calculated or strategic, but a lot of this is just personal to her and perhaps generational…she’s just a very private person. She’s not confessional, I’m gonna tell you everything I was thinking. You try every tool at your disposal…I think I only partially succeeded. There’s a certain depth that I was never able to get to. But I don’t feel too bad about that because I’m far from the only one, and even a lot of close friends of hers will tell you that there isn’t a different Nancy Pelosi who turns on when she knows she’s off the record or when she knows she’s among her personal friends. …So that in itself is a psychological insight of sorts. And so you learn those sorts of things even as you feel some parts of your subject are inaccessible from talking to people who’ve known them in a personal capacity. …I really did feel like I learned more about her from watching her in action as it were, than from almost anything that she told me in an interview.” FULL EPISODE

By Jane Lincoln Taylor, U.S. Correspondent

New York Correspondent Jane Lincoln Taylor reported on the semiannual Dorothy O. Helly Works-in-Progress Lecture given at the Women Writing Women’s Lives Seminar on October 18. This year, BIO member Victoria Phillips, author of Martha Graham’s Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy, was the lecturer. FULL STORY

What is your current project and at what stage is it? 

I’m currently in the very early stages of a new book looking at the creative process from the perspective of the behavioral sciences. I’ve been alternating between research and outlining (and re-outlining, and re-outlining . . .) for the last year and a half and now I’m finally about to start work on the proposal. It’s not a biography in any conventional sense, but the most engaging part so far has been the biographical part, digging into the stories of all sorts of creative people who “think for a living”—writers, artists, lawyers, designers, educators, engineers, etcetera—who I will profile in the book. 

Who is your favorite biographer or what is your favorite biography? 

That’s a tough one, so I’ll just rattle off a few favorite biographies that jump out at me from my shelf, though there are plenty of others I love: Never a Lovely So Real by Colin Asher (about Nelson Algren), Vera by Stacy Schiff, The Orientalist by Tom Reiss, and David Grann’s The Lost City of Z.  

What have been your most satisfying moments as a biographer? 

I’m sure this is pretty universal, but my most satisfying moments have been getting access to primary-source documents that few people—or even better, nobody else—has seen. While working on my book about the Panero family, I managed to get in touch with a writer who had helped one of the sons on the proposal for his memoirs, which were never completed or published. We met on the grounds of the medical facility outside Madrid where they had worked on the manuscript (this Panero son, Michi, had a lot of health problems) and after we walked around talking for a while, he just gave me a photocopy of the whole thing. It was very generous. It was only 30 or so pages but it was like no other material I’d come across and helped a great deal with my book. 

What have been your most frustrating moments? 

My most frustrating moments have been when people who I know are huge caches of stories [but] don’t want to talk to me. This happened with the ex-wife of one of the other Panero sons, who would’ve been like a skeleton key opening new doors to understanding the family better. She was hard to reach, until I finally found a friend of hers on LinkedIn who served as an intermediary. But she said no—not just once but every time I asked her over a couple of years. 

One research/marketing/attitudinal tip to share? 

Attitudinally, in my career I’m a big believer in the importance of “five-minute favors,” which Adam Grant popularized in his book Give and Take. I’m constantly looking for small ways to proactively help everyone I come across, with no expectation that I’ll get anything back from them, but with the faith that if we help others succeed we all end up a bit more successful. And as someone who spends a lot of time alone, it just feels good to interact this way. 

If you weren’t a biographer, what dream profession would you be in, and why? 

Chef—because I love eating but, in spite of my best efforts, I’m still a pretty mediocre home cook. That said, I probably couldn’t handle the physical intensity or lifestyle demands of the restaurant industry. So maybe I would be one of those food writers who seek out immersive cooking experiences.