Race, Racism, and Biography

July 10th, 2020

Six BIO members shared their views on race and biography for the July issue of The Biographer’s Craft: Black Lives/Young Readers by Ray Anthony Shepard Archival Interventions: Reconstructing Life on the Margins of History by Pamela Newkirk Biography Matters by Patricia Bell-Scott Before There Was Karen, There Was Miss Anne by Carla Kaplan The Sword and the Shield by Peniel E. Joseph Biography Has Mattered to Black Lives by Eric K. Washington  … Read More »

Black Lives Matter to BIO

June 15th, 2020

During this historic summer of 2020, Black Lives Matter is garnering support nationally and internationally. For biographers and readers of biography, black lives matter, and writing black lives matters. Six BIO members will contribute essays to the July issue of The Biographer’s Craft about black lives, racism, and how they relate to biography. Here, in the meantime, are biographies of African-Americans by BIO members. Alexandrov, Vladimir. The Black Russian, 2013. Bell-Scott, Patricia. The Firebrand … Read More »

BIO Workshop: Living Subjects

June 9th, 2020

On Wednesday, June 24, BIO presents “Living on the Edge: Writing Biography of a Living Subject.”  Kai Bird (author of a forthcoming biography of President Jimmy Carter), David Greenberg (John Lewis), and Will Swift (Joan Baez) will talk about the the craft of writing an authorized or unauthorized life of a living subject. This form of biography requires juggling the skills of a journalist (tracking down key sources and interviewing them) and a historian (doing… Read More »

BIO Welcomes New Board Members and a New Vice President

June 9th, 2020

By Linda Leavell BIO members recently elected a new vice president, Sarah Kilborne, and three new board members: Natalie Dykstra, Steve Paul, and Eric K. Washington. Like BIO’s membership at large, members of BIO’s Board of Directors come from diverse backgrounds and practice the art of biography in multiple print and non-print media. Sarah Kilborne has chaired BIO’s Publicity and Social Media Committee for the past two years. Thanks to her initiative and enthusiasm for… Read More »

BIO Workshop: Making Full Use of Fair Use

May 29th, 2020

You can see a video of this workshop here. This meeting is free and open to all who register.  Fair use—the right of biographers and other writers, under limited conditions, to quote, paraphrase, summarize, and reproduce the copyrighted words and images of our subjects and others, without paying fees—is embedded in the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. Our distinguished panel of experts cuts through the almost universal confusion about fair use to illuminate this… Read More »

BIO Workshop: Promoting Your Book During the Pandemic 

May 21st, 2020

This meeting is free and open to all who register. May 27, 2020 01:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada) Jennifer Richards and Rachel Tarlow Gul from Over the River Public Relations will share what they have learned about how book promotion is changing during the COVID-19 pandemic. They will share their insights and strategies and explain the role of a publicist and how to hire one. Former Random House, Inc. executives, Richards and… Read More »

Sonia Purnell Wins 2020 Plutarch Award

May 16th, 2020

Sonia Purnell’s A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II (Viking/Penguin) has won the 2020 Plutarch Award for the Best Biography of 2019. The Plutarch is the world’s only literary award given to biographers by biographers. Named after the famous Greek writer, BIO awards the honor to the best biography of the year, chosen by a committee of five distinguished biographers. The award comes with… Read More »

Jay Prosser Wins Hazel Rowley Prize

May 9th, 2020

Jay Prosser is the 2020 winner of BIO’s Hazel Rowley Prize for his proposal for Empire’s Loving Strangers: Journeys Through an Asian-Jewish Camphorwood Chest, a biography that explores one Jewish family’s experiences and connections across empires and centuries. Prosser is a reader in humanities at the University of Leeds in England, where he has taught since 1999. His book was previously shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Prize for the best unpublished biography, which is… Read More »