Biographers International Organization

Below are reports on two of the panels that were offered at the Ninth Annual BIO Conference in May, written with assistance from John Grady. Each article continues on the BIO website. BIO members can read about seven more sessions in the July issue of The Biographer’s Craft; an archived copy is available in the Member Area. You can see a photo gallery from the conference here. Writing Multiple Lives Lisa Cohen, author… Read More »

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is introducing a new fellowship program this year—the Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowships—to support the research ambitions of community college faculty in the humanities and related social sciences. The program, which has its first application deadline on September 26, 2018, will offer up to 26 fellowships of $40,000 to community college faculty working on a diverse range of research projects. You can find out more about the program… Read More »

On September 20 and 21, 2018, BIO joins the Biography Institute and the Biography Society in hosting the conference “Different Lives: Global Perspectives on Biography in Public Cultures and Societies.” The conference will take place in Groningen, Netherlands, home of the Biography Institute, which is directed by BIO member Hans Renders. The event will allow biographers to look beyond their own borders, explore how biography is practiced in other parts of the world, and discuss… Read More »

More than 225 established and aspiring biographers from three continents immersed themselves in their craft at the Ninth Annual Biographers International Organization Conference, held May 18 and 19, at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Along with the announcement of the Plutarch Award for 2018, conference highlights included a keynote address by Richard Holmes, winner of the 2018 BIO Award, and a discussion between Edmund… Read More »

Caroline Fraser won the 2018 Plutarch Award for Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. The book had previously won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, among other honors. Fraser received her award at the ninth annual BIO Conference on May 20. The Plutarch is the world’s only literary award given to biography by biographers. Named after the famous Ancient Greek biographer, the Plutarch is determined by secret ballot from a formal list… Read More »

By James Atlas A great biographer is someone who writes great biographies. A revolu- tionary biographer is someone who writes revolutionary biographies. Since the publication of his massive, ingenious, and mesmerizing debut, Shelley: The Pursuit, published when he was twenty-nine, Richard Holmes has written seven biographies and assembled four collections of biographical essays uniform only in their strange, unclassifiable aura. Holmes’s essential principle is not simply to write about his subjects but to inhabit… Read More »

TBC: What was it like being president? Will Swift: Haven’t I always been the president of BIO? We shift our identities more easily than we think—I can barely remember not being in the role. Have two years actually passed since I took over the presidency at the Richmond conference? Time flows swiftly when you are fully engaged in a passionate endeavor. I love supporting writers and writing. At the age of seventy, I heed… Read More »

Acclaimed literary biographer Richard Holmes will receive the 2018 BIO Award at BIO’s upcoming conference in New York and give the keynote speech on May 19. As a preview of that, James Atlas interviewed Holmes; you can read the interview here.… Read More »