Biographers International Organization

By Dona Munker In fifty years of writing biography, the innovative and prolific Richard Holmes has become known to his fellow practitioners as “a biographer’s biographer” for his reflections on the art and craft of biography (Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer and Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer). At the 2014 annual Leon Levy Biography Lecture in New York, Holmes shared some insights with a rapt audience. Holmes was about 18 when… Read More »

By James McGrath Morris From the twerks of Miley Cyrus to the typography of Giambattista Bodoni, from the humor of Bill Cosby to the antics of Charlie Chaplin, from the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower to the rule of Joseph Stalin, the more than 100 biographies coming to bookstores this fall run the gamut of possibilities. While biography, like other segments of publishing, is navigating rough waters, writers keep producing a remarkably rich selection of works.… Read More »

The following list of biographies appearing between September 2014 and February 2015 was assembled using Edelweiss, a web-based interactive publisher catalog system widely used in the book industry. If we missed a title, please let us know at editortbc@biographersinternational.org September Life in the Writings of Storm Jameson: A Biography by Elizabeth Maslen (Northwestern University Press) American Gandhi: A. J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century by Leilah Danielson (University of Pennsylvania… Read More »

It’s rare when biographies and biographers make the front page of a national magazine — in this case it’s the September 5, 2014 issue of Newsweek. But don’t rush to celebrate just yet.  In a lengthy piece for the magazine, reporter David Cay Johnson  debunks the work of celebrity biographer C. David Heymann — author of juicy tell-alls on Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Liz Taylor, to name a few — finding that much of… Read More »

To reserve your place at the Robert Gottlieb Celebration from 6:00-8:00 PM, Wednesday, December 3, 2014, at the New York Society Library, 53 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075, purchase a ticket by clicking on the button below. Select number of tickets 1 ticket $45.00 USD2 tickets $90.00 USD… Read More »

More than four decades ago, while working as a freelance journalist in Malawi, Philip Short received a letter from Penguin: Would he be interested in writing a biography of Malawian president Hastings Banda, for the publisher’s series Political Giants of the 20th Century? Short readily agreed, adding now, “I suspect they had no idea that I was then 23 years old!” Since that auspicious start, Short has a made his mark writing biographies of world… Read More »

By Steve Weinberg We biographers covet awards for our books, as do novelists and poets and essayists and journalists from all media. After all, writers tend to receive little recognition and less cash. My advice is not exactly to forget about awards, but something similar—relax, because most of us will never win and many of the “best” biographies, however that is measured, will not receive the prize recognition they deserve. Michael Burgan asked me to… Read More »

Linda Leavell’s Holding on Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) won the Plutarch Award for the best biography of 2013. The winner and the three finalists were revealed at a ceremony held at the closing of the fifth annual Compleat Biographer conference at UMass Boston on May 17.   “I’m truly humbled by this award, and I’m also humbled by my company here, the fellow nominees,” Leavell said… Read More »