Biographers International Organization

BIO encourages all members to review its four fellowships, now accepting applications for 2023. Please share information about the Rollin Fellowship, the Chip Bishop Fellowship, and the Rowley Prize, which are open to nonmembers, with your friends, colleagues, and networks. Please note that the amounts have increased from $3,000 to $5,000 for both the Rollin Fellowship and Rowley Prize, and the number of recipients has increased from one to two for the Rollin Fellowship and… Read More »

Gerald Howard received Biographers International Organization’s 2022 Editorial Excellence Award on Tuesday, November 8. The award is presented annually to an outstanding editor of biography. Co-hosted with the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the ceremony took place at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and featured five authors paying tribute to his work: Debby Applegate, Madison Smartt Bell, Kathryn Harrison, James Kaplan, and Jay Parini.  “Having worked with Gerry for over… Read More »

Biography Lab 2023: An Online Forum on Craft is a one-day, online conference that will take place on Saturday, January 21, 2023. BIO’s Board of Directors created this event, which we hope will become annual, in direct response to the feedback we received after the May 2022 online BIO Conference. While many BIO members are eager to meet in person again, many others urged us to preserve some aspects of the online conference for… Read More »

Please join fellow BIO members on November 10 for an hour of online social networking. This will be an opportunity to meet with those who are working on similar types of biography or who are at a similar stage in the process. When you register, your Zoom confirmation email will have a link to a questionnaire that will help us to organize the breakout rooms for this event. Please complete the questionnaire as soon as… Read More »

A longtime member of the Board of Directors and current chair of the Membership Committee, best-selling biographer Kitty Kelley has made a major gift to BIO of $50,000. Kelley’s donation will fund two Frances “Frank” Rollin Fellowships per year for the next five years. The winners will receive a stipend of $5,000 each.   “I feel that supporting the Rollin Fellowships helps BIO reach its immense potential as an organization that is supportive and inclusive,” Kelley… Read More »

BIO is celebrating the 100th episode of the BIO Podcast! The 100th episode features BIO member Kitty Kelley interviewing Gwendolyn Mink and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu about their biography, Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress (NYU Press, 2022). The BIO Podcast is managed by BIO Board member Sonja Williams. Listen to the episode here or on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts Spotify, or Stitcher. The complete podcast archive is also available… Read More »

BIO is pleased to announce the first in a series of online events planned for 2022-2023: a discussion of the 2022 Plutarch Award winner, Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence by Frances Wilson. The event will take place on Saturday, September 17, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Savings time. Register here. Nigel Hamilton, chair of the 2022 Plutarch Award committee, will interview Frances Wilson about the way she crafted the… Read More »

Longtime BIO member and BIO Board member Kitty Kelley has donated $50,000 to the organization. The generous donation will fund two annual Rollin Fellowships of $5,000 each for the next five years. The Frances “Frank” Rollin Fellowship, given to writers of exceptional biographies in progress about African American subjects, was first awarded in 2021 to Rachel L. Swarns for a multigenerational biography of an enslaved Black family torn apart by the 1838 slave sale that… Read More »