In Breakfast at Tiffany’s Truman Capote wrote, “Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning…” This autumn, BIO is beginning preparations for a brand-new virtual conference—Biography Lab 2023—that will explore the elements of craft in biography—a very fitting topic for this publication. Details of this inaugural, one-day event happening in January, can be found below.

On a difficult note, this month BIO is beginning to learn how to live without a major light of our organization. Anne C. Heller—a four-time chair of the BIO Conference, a master practitioner of the craft of biography, a longtime BIO Board member, and a friend and inspiration to many throughout the organization—died October 10, of cancer. She was 71. BIO member Kate Buford, Anne’s close friend and co-chair of the 2022 BIO Conference, shares a poignant remembrance of Anne in this issue.

by Kate Buford

“We’ve lost her.”—Kitty Kelley 

At its best BIO has been compared to a family. An interconnected group of biographers devoted to a common task: telling the life stories of famous—and unduly forgotten—men and women. More experienced members share their wisdom with the others. The nature of the work creates strong bonds because the work is based on no less than the human condition: Why do people do what they do? 

If all that is true, most of the time, with the death last week of Anne Heller the BIO family lost one of its parents. Rigorous but gentle. A zen-like serenity with a prickly impatience. What Kitty Kelley has called her “mesmerizing voice”: soft, gentle, but peremptory when it needed to be. Quick with the sincere compliment for a job well done. An ideal parent. 

When our founding parent, Jamie McGrath Morris, heard of Anne’s death a singular moment came to mind. “Years ago, Anne got mad at me about some now long-forgotten issue. What she didn’t know was that at the other end of the telephone line I was smiling. Anne’s anger—quickly followed with an apology—let me know that BIO was going to make it. Her willingness to express her wrath with me proved BIO had grown from an idea that I hatched in 2008 to an established organization run by its members. Anne’s ceaseless efforts to make BIO a reality and, yes, her willingness to raise her voice with me is why we owe such a debt of gratitude to her.” 

As BIO matured and grew, Anne kept track, every step of the way. Linda Leavell, BIO’s current president, picks up where Jamie left off: “Few people have done more for BIO than Anne Heller,” Linda wrote. “She served three terms on the Board of Directors and has served on virtually every BIO committee. She won the 2017 Ray A. Shepard Service Award and co-chaired the Program Committee, her particular love, for the past three years. Many people said that the program for this year’s 2022 conference was the best ever.” 

In 2018, BIO finally gained a long-sought goal: a base in New York City for the annual BIO Conference—The Leon Levy Center for Biography. Anne cemented that connection as Program Committee co-chair, bringing in the many editors, publishers, authors, and agents based in or near the city. The membership could be better served by these New York-centric connections, and the conference—pandemic notwithstanding—grew and prospered apace, as a unique source for biographers around the world. 

“We’ve lost a charismatic advocate for the cause of biography,” said Kai Bird, the executive director of the Leon Levy Center. “Anne was indefatigable, smart, but relentless in her pursuit of her craft. She also had that rare emotional intelligence so valuable for someone everyone wanted to chair a committee. She knew how to herd the cats with a deft calmness. It was always a pleasure attending a meeting with her.”   

Anne often appeared so calm in the midst of the inevitable conference snafus that at the BIO Conference at Boston’s Emerson College someone asked her if she was a Zen Buddhist. She laughed but didn’t answer. 

Anne also often hosted what we called “The Gotham Group,” a monthly evening gathering of about 10 biographers from New York (and one Virginia). In her beautiful apartment on Fifth, and later on Park, she graciously welcomed us in to share news and talk shop. “During our decade together,” writes Justin Martin, “I also appreciated her enviable knowledge of literature, wit, fiercely held opinions, the breadth of her interests, her enthusiasm. Anne was an original. She is missed.”  

Anne’s leadership is only half of her story. Holly Van Leuven, the editor of TBC, which you are now reading, asked me to be sure to include in this obituary Anne’s “own attentions to the craft of biography” and to make it a “tribute to an amazing craftswoman.”  

“I first saw and knew of Anne,” Holly writes, “through her panel at the 2012 BIO Conference in Los Angeles, and I still remember her ‘How to Write Beautiful Biography’ presentation. She was such a fine artist in biography and so generous in sharing her wisdom.” Two years later, Holly would be the first winner of BIO’s Hazel Rowley Prize, for her proposal for a biography of Ray Bolger, which was published in 2019. One example of Anne’s “incalculably diffusive” effect on her fellow biographers.           

It’s no surprise that Anne’s own two trade biographies were of formidable women: Ayn Rand and the World She Made and Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times. Doing justice to their lives required a rigorous, multi-level intelligence and a certain fearlessness. “Lucid and accessible” was a critic’s description of the Arendt biography. Published as one of James Atlas’s Penguin Lives series of short biographies, it encapsulated Arendt’s life in 144 pages, a feat in itself. The New York Times found that Anne’s telling of Rand’s life was “far more interesting than anything in Rand’s novels. That is because Heller is dealing with a human being, and one with more than her share of human failings and contradictions—‘gallant, driven, brilliant, brash, cruel . . . and ultimately self-destructive,’ as Heller puts it.”  

This brew of motive, act, and consequence that forms the complex flow of a person’s life was a source of endless fascination for Anne whether it was for the subject of a biography or for a close friend sitting across the table from her in an Upper East Side coffee shop. 

When Anne asked me, on the telephone, in 2019, if I would co-chair the 2022 BIO Program Committee with her, I said yes immediately, only because it was Anne who was asking. A few months later, before Christmas, she called to tell me the cancer diagnosis. It was a rare privilege to work with her going forward through her early treatments, expecting that at any moment she would no longer be able to carry her share. That never happened. She finished the job, a professional to the end. 

She called me after the BIO Board meeting, which met in late May, to assess the 2022 BIO Conference. The sound of her voice—exuberant, happy—telling me how pleased the board and attendees were with the conference was a tonic. It meant everything to her that the BIO Conference program was smart, topical, and attuned to the hidden figures waiting to have their stories told. The craft had to keep up with the edge of the times. 

One of the last times I spoke with her, I asked what she was reading. “Trollope,” she said. I asked which title I should read so we could share it. Phineas Finn, she said. I read it, loved it, ripped apart the old Penguin paperback to take the half I hadn’t read to Sicily and, at her suggestion when I got back, continued with Phineas Redux. Then, the connection stopped. I kept calling and emailing, not wanting to be intrusive.  

When Linda called me last week on the telephone to give me the news of Anne’s death, I so appreciated the call. It was personal. Family. Anne would have recognized the gesture because she would have done the same thing. 

I, like many others, am left with an ache to see her again. There was so much—life, death, love, ambition, regrets—to be discussed and shared with empathy and incisive understanding. And humor. I loved her laugh, and I loved her. 

Kate Buford is the author of Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe (Knopf, 2010).

BIO’s Newest Event: “Biography Lab 2023”—an Online Forum on Craft

BIO recently announced a new event: “Biography Lab 2023: An Online Forum on Craft,” which will take place virtually on Saturday, January 21, 2023, from 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time). The program chair for the inaugural Biography Lab is BIO Board member Natalie Dykstra, who has been busy creating this brand-new offering from scratch.  

The schedule for the day is already set, and the program’s opening salvo will be a plenary address given by Dame Hermione Lee on the subject of “Biographical Choices.” Dykstra said Lee’s lecture will be approximately 30 minutes long and cover “all the choices that confront a biographer along the way from subject, archives, tone, shape of the chapters, the cover—all the choices that one makes from tip to tail.”  

The body of the program will consist of three different 90-minute forums. The first, following the plenary, will be led by Eric K. Washington, author of Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal (Liveright, 2019). Washington’s forum is called “Curating Context: How to Angle for a Subject’s Unwritten Voice from Various Sources.” This element of crafting biography was key to Washington’s work on Boss of the Grips. Concerning his research on James H. Williams, Washington said: “Though I did find some letters, he wasn’t a man of letters per se with a body of personal writing for me to pore through. But he was well-known and referenced frequently in his time. And leaning into many of the various circumstances of his social and work environment, I could ‘hear’ him, so to speak. And it’s again the case for some subjects I’m researching now.”  

Washington is crafting his forum with the goal of giving participants more practical ideas for discovering the style and substance of their biographical subjects. He said, “I think attendees will discover more sources, both obvious and unlikely ones—from vital records to newspapers or ephemeral chronicles to parallel accounts of secondary characters—through which their subjects might unexpectedly sing.” 

After a break, the afternoon will consist of two additional forums: “It’s a Personal Matter: Characters and their Uses,” led by T. J. Stiles, and, “Filling in the Blanks: How to Deploy History in All Kinds of Biographies,” led by Caroline Fraser. Both are Pulitzer Prize winners: Stiles, a two-time recipient, has won most recently for Custer’s Trial: A Life on the Frontiers of a New America (Knopf, 2015), and Fraser for Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Metropolitan Books, 2017).  

Dykstra said of Stiles: “He’s a very remarkable stylist, and he’s aware of how to write a propulsive narrative.” She also elaborated on how she believes Fraser’s style of incorporating history into biography will be of value to other biographers: “I think of them as wide shots and close-ups. When do you go wide so you get a sense of the context of your subject, and when do you go very, very interior to your subject? I think she does that so well in such a moving way in Prairie Fires, even as she takes on a fraught subject.”  

This will be the pilot year for the Biography Lab, and Dykstra stresses that BIO will be learning about how this program can best serve the members, even as attendees come away with valuable insights into the craft of biography from the lab’s nascent format. The Biography Lab will be free to BIO members and $60 for nonmembers (but the registration price includes a year’s membership in BIO). Concerning logistical matters, Dykstra said, “The plenary will be recorded, but the forums will be private. I want participants to feel invited and I want them to feel secure. There will be a range of experience in the sessions. We will invite participants to share about their works in progress and ask questions—where they’re stuck [in the process] and what would work for them.” 

The Biography Lab is one way that BIO continues to reach members who may not be able to attend in-person events, for a variety of reasons, as well as a way to engage international members. Dykstra explained, “Maybe what we’ll learn from this year is that we need more sessions, or we need more days. But I imagine we are going to cover quite a few aspects of the process of writing biography.”  

Registration for the inaugural Biography Lab is now open on Eventbrite. Please click here for more information. 

Six Questions with Leah Redmond Chang

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

My current project, Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power (forthcoming from Bloomsbury and FSG), follows the intertwined lives of three 16th-century European queens—Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots—over the course of two decades. I’ve just turned in copy-edits and we are moving on to layouts and jacket copy. It’s great to be at this point! 

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

I don’t have a favorite biography, but two that I’ve read in the last five years have really stuck with me. As a child, I learned to love reading thanks to the Little House books, so it felt a little like meeting old friends—and yet at the same time discovering a very different flesh-and-blood Laura Ingalls—when I read Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires. And, as a former professor of French literature, I ate up Judith Thurman’s astounding and masterful biography of Colette,  Secrets of the Flesh.  

What have been your most satisfying moments as a biographer? 

Getting to know my second-tier characters. For this project, one real surprise was Philip II of Spain (of Armada fame). Reading about him sometimes sent me into fits of laughter in the library. I did not expect him to be such a colorful guy. 

What have been your most frustrating moments? 

As for any writer, there are those times when you realize that your original vision just isn’t going to work on the page. For instance, I had originally planned to write about four women instead of three in Young Queens. For a host of reasons, I cut the fourth queen, and it was definitely the right decision. But I still think about her and wonder if I couldn’t have found a way to make it work.  

One research/marketing/attitudinal tip to share?  

Cut the fourth queen. 

What genre, besides biography, do you read for pleasure and who are some of your favorite writers? 

 I read a lot of fiction, and I also love short stories. Some favorite authors include Rachel Cusk, Alice Munro, and Viet Thanh Nguyen. I also love Louisa Thomas’s reporting in The New Yorker. Thomas also has a wonderful biography, Louisa, about Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams. I thought it was beautifully done. 

 

Learn more about Leah Redmond Chang here. 

This month, Kitty Kelley gives us a glimpse into what an office looks like decades into an illustrious career in biography.

Kelley writes, “Here are a few snaps of my office, which I’m preparing to vacate after 30 years and having a devil of a time. . . . That Vanity Fair pic [of me at a dinner table] was for for their Hall of Fame, and they surrounded me with look-alikes from some of the bios I wrote . . . it was before I wrote The Royals, and Oprah, and The Family.”

Interviewed by Ruth Franklin
(originally published in the Paris Review) 

Editor’s Note: As we look forward to the first Biography Lab, I selected this interview to share, as Biography Lab chair Natalie Dykstra named it as a major resource for biographers looking to improve their craft. 

As soon as I have my bearings I tend to head to the official archive, assuming one exists. For Saint-Exupéry there was no such address—his papers were scattered among friends and family. On another front, I was immensely fortunate. Saint-Exupéry charmed on contact. From children to cab drivers, no one who met him ever forgot him. He had moreover died young, which meant that his generation survived him. Several pioneering Aéropostale colleagues were still around. At the end of his life, Saint-Exupéry flew reconnaissance missions from Corsica with a squadron of young Americans. He was 20 years older than they. They knew he was a national treasure but had no inkling why. Well, I suppose one did— “We were illiterate,” he explained. Saint-Exupéry was a wizard with a deck of cards. He spoke not a word of English. He was utterly unqualified to fly a P-38. He rather made an impression.  

He also lived between the invention of the typewriter and the invention of email, an historical sweet spot documentation-wise. His letters were delicious, as was every scribbled note and inscription. The Bibliothèque nationale holds a collection of his manuscripts. I even had an archive of ephemera, of the kinds of clippings normally scattered to the winds. Into all of this I sauntered unknowingly. Beginner’s luck! I had trouble only with Saint-Exupéry’s longtime Parisian mistress, with whom I jousted weekly for several painful seasons. She withheld her papers, today under seal in the Bibliothèque nationale. With great glee she informed me that they would remain unavailable until after I was dead.   FULL INTERVIEW

Amanuensis: A person whose employment is to write what another dictates, or to copy what another has written. Source: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913).

The most recent episode of the BIO Podcast features BIO member Marko Perko being interviewed by Sonja Williams about his book Tesla: His Tremendous and Troubled Life (co-authored by Stephen M. Stahl, Prometheus, 2022).  Listen here.