Biographers International Organization

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 »

More than 200 biographers, including ones from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, attended the fifth annual Compleat Biographer Conference, held May 17 at the University of Massachusetts Boston. As at past conferences, one of the day’s highlights was the presentation of the BIO Award at the afternoon luncheon, which this year went to Stacy Schiff, author of Saint-Exupéry: A Life,A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of … Read More »

BIO members selected Brian Jay Jones to serve as president and Cathy Curtis as vice president in an election that concluded on April 30. Jones has been a BIO board member since 2009 and served as BIO’s secretary and vice president. He is the author of Jim Henson: The Biography and Washington Irving: An American Original. Curtis, a former Los Angeles Times staff writer, has been a board member since 2013 and served as… Read More »

BIO’s Program Committee is putting the final touches on the fifth annual Compleat Biographer Conference, which is returning to Boston, site of the inaugural conference. In a sign of how BIO has grown since 2010, more than 200 biographers are already signed up for this year’s event, compared to the 163 who attended the first conference. And this year, some of the panel sessions and tours are already sold out. As always, one of the… Read More »

This May, BIO will give its first Editorial Excellence Award to Robert Gottlieb. The award honors an editor who has made outstanding contributions to the field of biography. A former editor in chief at both Simon & Schuster and Knopf, Gottlieb has edited countless best-selling novels as well as modern classics of the biographer’s craft. He is also a biographer himself. A paperback edition of his most recent book, Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters… Read More »

Jim Elledge Jim Elledge is the author of Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The Tragic Life of An Outsider Artist, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for gay memoir/biography and for the Publishing Triangle nonfiction award. A published poet, Elledge is a professor of English at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. At the BIO conference, he will join Cassandra Langer, Barry Werth, and Brian Halley on the panel “Twice Marginalized: The Challenges of Writing … Read More »

Nominees for Plutarch Award for Best Biography of the Year as Selected by Biographers Revealed BOSTON, MA—Biographers will once again determine the best biography of the year when they bestow the Plutarch Award at a gala ceremony in Boston on May 17. Named after the famous Ancient Greek biographer, the prize aims to be the genre’s equivalent of the Oscar, in that the winner is determined by secret ballot from a list of nominees selected… Read More »

The following are the election statements and biographies submitted by the candidates. RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT BRIAN JAY JONES Brian Jay Jones has been a BIO Board Member since 2009, served for two years as BIO’s secretary, and presently serves as its elected Vice President.  “Five successful years after establishing BIO, we’ve reached a critical juncture. More than ever, it’s vital that we increase our numbers, actively promote the organization (including our members, our conference,… Read More »