Registration Opens for 2019 BIO Conference

February 1st, 2019

Registration for the Tenth Annual BIO Conference (#BIONYC2019), to be held May 17-19 at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, is now open. You can get more information, see a complete program and list of participants, and register here.… Read More »

BIO Announces Long List for Plutarch Award

January 14th, 2019

A distinguished panel of judges, all eminent biographers, has nominated ten books for the Plutarch Award, honoring the best biography of 2018. The Plutarch is the only international literary award judged and presented by biographers. Following the announcement of the ten nominees, BIO’s Plutarch jury will narrow the list to four finalists, and BIO voting members around the world will choose the winning biography. The winner will be announced on May 18, 2019, at the … Read More »

The Plutarch Award Longlist for 2019

January 11th, 2019

Here are the nominees for the 2019 Plutarch Award, honoring the best biography published in 2018, listed in alphabetical order by author: Commended Books In a year when an abundance of fine biographies went to press, the 2019 Plutarch Award Jury would also like to honor the following eight works: An American Odyssey: The Life and Work of Romare Bearden by Mary Schmidt Campbell, Oxford University Press Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman … Read More »

Mayborn/BIO Fellowship Winner Hones Her Work

December 15th, 2018

Alison Owings knew she wanted to write about homelessness, but she wasn’t sure how to approach the topic. Then, on a walking tour of San Francisco’s notorious Tenderloin neighborhood, she met Del Seymour, an elderly African American man leading a group of curious whites through the streets he knew so well. After all, he had earned the unofficial title of “the mayor of the Tenderloin.” As he recounted some of his experiences as a homeless… Read More »

Remarks of 2018 Editorial Excellence Award Winner Tim Duggan

November 15th, 2018

Thank you so much, Will, for that incredibly generous introduction, and for all the thought and effort you’ve put into this.  And many thanks to Jamie, and David, and Adam, for making me blush for the last twenty minutes. Since David is now finishing his biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, everyone who knows him knows that he rarely comes out of his writing cave for ANYTHING at this stage of the game, so I’m so happy… Read More »

Duggan Receives Editorial Excellence Award

November 15th, 2018

On November 7, BIO presented its fifth annual Editorial Excellence Award to Tim Duggan, editor and publisher of Tim Duggan Books, an imprint of Crown at Penguin Random House. The Biographer’s Craft will have a write-up of the evening’s events in December. You can read Duggan’s remarks on accepting the award here.… Read More »

“Different Lives” Conference Provides International Perspectives on Biography

November 11th, 2018

By John A. Farrell Did liberal scholarship, degrading the principle of truth with postmodern theory, pave the way for Donald Trump’s duplicity? Biographer Nigel Hamilton, a former BIO president, proposed as much in a biting address that launched “Different Lives,” a three-day conference on biography at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, in late September. “The White House was won . . . by a real estate developer committed to a platform of misogyny,… Read More »

Transcription Services Make Interviewing Easier

November 4th, 2018

By James McGrath Morris So you land a terrific two-hour interview in the course of researching your next biography. What now? If you want to obtain a full transcript of your interview, the Internet will link you to two providers that I have found to be well suited for our line of work. In the past, most transcription services were designed for legal use and were costly because of the demand among clients for precision.… Read More »