Great Lives Series Kicks Off

February 6th, 2013

The 10th anniversary season of the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series began last month, with Philip Freeman speaking about Julius Caesar. The lectures, which are free and typically draw several hundred people, are sponsored by the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. In the months to come, the lectures will look at the lives of such diverse figures as Brigham Young, Rasputin, Marian Anderson, Michelangelo, and Walter Cronkite. Lecturers will include BIO member Carl… Read More »

Researcher to the Stars Offers Tips

February 5th, 2013

Here is the complete interview with researcher and writer Michael Hill from the February issue of The Biographer’s Craft. TBC: You’ve just been hired for a new biographical project, or are beginning one of your own.  Briefly, what are your first steps in beginning research? Hill: First, find out what manuscript collections are in existence and are they currently open to researchers. Where are they located and how extensive are they—i.e., do… Read More »

Spring Books – 2013

February 5th, 2013

  JANUARY Johnson and Boswell: A Biography of Friendship by John B. Radner (Yale University Press) The Watchful Clothier: The Life of an Eighteenth-Century Protestant Capitalist by Matthew Kadane (Yale University Press) Ravel by Roger Nichols (Yale University Press) George II: King and Elector by Andrew C. Thompson (Yale University Press) Hawthorne’s Habitations: A Literary Life by Robert Milder (Oxford University Press) The Pinecone: The Story of Sarah Losh, Forgotten Romantic Heroine—Antiquarian, Architect, and Visionary… Read More »

Compleat Biographer Conference Program Set;
Registration to Open Soon

December 27th, 2012

The 2013 Compleat Biographer conference, scheduled for May 17 through May 19 in New York City, will include 20 panels, three or four on-site research workshops, and four master classes, according to program committee chair Brian Jay Jones. “The program committee has put together an outstanding lineup of subjects for the conference,” said BIO vice president Jones. “There will be not-to-missed panels for all biographers, seasoned professionals as well as those just starting.” The preliminary… Read More »

All In: Biographers React to the Petraeus-Broadwell Affair

December 27th, 2012

Readers rarely come across articles on the craft or ethics of biography in the mainstream media. There are some exceptions, of course: the publication earlier this year of the fourth volume of Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson biography drew major coverage in such periodicals as Esquire and Newsweek, and Caro was interviewed on CBS’s Sunday Morning. Last month, we saw another exception to this rule. When subject and writer have an affair and that affair leads… Read More »

2013 BIO Conference Set for NYC

November 14th, 2012

The program committee of Biographers International Organization, acting on the recommendation of the site committee, just announced that the fourth annual Compleat Biographer Conference will be held from May 17 through May 19, 2013, in New York City. The committee is still hashing out details for the conference site and the panels to be offered, as well as pre- and post-conference events; Hurricane Sandy delayed finalizing the conference site selection. BIO president James McGrath Morris… Read More »

Massie Embraces the Story

November 5th, 2012

by New York Correspondent Dona Munker Robert K. Massie, a journalist and historian whose gift for vivid narrative has made him the preeminent American biographer of Russian royals, makes his job sound easy. “I am a storyteller,” he explains modestly, adding that he writes biography because “telling stories about peoplpe in the past is important to everyone trying to understand who we are and where we come from.” Massie’s remarks came as part of the… Read More »