Biographers International Organization

BIO’s Plutarch Award Committee has chosen the four books highlighted below as the finalists for this year’s Plutarch Award, the only international literary award for a biography that is chosen by fellow biographers. BIO members will have three months to read the finalists and vote for the winner.  The Plutarch Award will be presented on Saturday, May 19, at the Ninth Annual BIO Conference in New York. To see a list of the nominees for… Read More »

Here are the nominees for the 2018 Plutarch Award, honoring the best biography published in 2017, listed in alphabetical order by author: BIO PLUTARCH AWARD COMMITTEE MEMBERS, 2018: Anne C. Heller, chair Kate Buford Nassir Ghaemi Brian Jay Jones Andrew Lownie Julia Markus J.W. (Hans) Renders Ray Shepard Will Swift, ex-officio… Read More »

Biographers International Organization will convene on the weekend of May 18–20, in Manhattan, for three days of discussion, camaraderie, and exploration. “BIO is especially pleased that this year’s conference will be hosted by CUNY and the Leon Levy Center for Biography,” said program co-chairs Heath Lee and John Farrell. “The scope of expertise that these two organizations, devoted to biography, bring to the table is stunning.” Registration for the conference will begin in late January.… Read More »

Four BIO board members helped kick off an affiliation between BIO and the Community College Humanities Association (CCHA) on November 10, when they took part in a panel discussion at the CCHA’s national conference in Baltimore, Maryland. In front of an assembled group of two-year-college faculty and students, moderator Kate Buford introduced panelists Brian Jay Jones, Dean King, and Heath Lee. What followed was a lively discussion on the merits of biography as a focus… Read More »

By Dona Munker, TBC New York Correspondent On November 8, Robert Weil, editor-in-chief and publishing director of Liveright, an imprint of W. W. Norton, received BIO’s fourth annual Editorial Excellence Award. He joins Nan A. Talese, Jonathan Segal, and Robert Gottlieb, as winners of this honor. Introduced by one of his authors, Thomas Jefferson biographer Annette Gordon-Reed, Weil said that he thinks he may have become an editor because editing fulfills “a yearning to rescue… Read More »

By Dona Munker, TBC New York Correspondent  Deirdre Bair, who has written six biographies, is currently writing about her experiences while researching and writing Beckett (1978) and Simone de Beauvoir (1990). At the fall 2017 Dorothy O. Helly Work-in-Progress Lecture, presented by New York’s Women Writing Women’s Lives Seminar, she talked about her reasons for doing so and the challenges for a seasoned biographer who decides to become part of the story. Bair originally planned… Read More »

Karen Adler Abramson and the staff at the John F. Kennedy Library Archives received their 2017 Biblio Award last month from BIO’s James McGrath Morris. From left to right, the honorees are Laurie Austin, Textual/Audiovisual Reference Archivist; Maryrose Grossman, Audiovisual Reference Archivist; Stacey Chandler, Textual Reference Archivist; and Karen Adler Abramson, Director of Archives. The Biblio Award is presented annually to recognize a librarian or archivist who has made an exceptional contribution to the craft… Read More »

In honor of the work of Robert and Ina Caro, Biographers International Organization has set up an annual research and travel fellowship. BIO members with a work in progress can apply to receive funding for research trips to archives or to important settings in their subject’s lives. This fellowship is a reflection of BIO’s ongoing commitment to support authors in writing beautifully contextualized and tenaciously researched biographies. The Caro Research/Travel Fellowship is restricted to support… Read More »