Biographers International Organization

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 »

The Ray A. Shepard Award was presented at the 2022 BIO Conference to Anne Boyd Rioux, author of Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist (W. W. Norton & Company, 2016) and Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018).   The Shepard Award recognizes a BIO volunteer who has donated exceptionally of their time and talents for the benefit of the organization.… Read More »

Frances Wilson’s Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) has won the 2022 Plutarch Award for the best biography of 2021. Wilson, a biographer and critic, is also the author of The Courtesan’s Revenge: The Life of Harriette Wilson, the Woman Who Blackmailed the King (Faber & Faber, 2003) How to Survive the Titanic: The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay (Harper, 2011), and Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas … Read More »

Interview conducted by Holly Van Leuven, editor of The Biographer’s Craft Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in the April 2022 issue of The Biographer’s Craft, the members’ publication of BIO. Megan Marshall is the distinguished biographer of The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (Houghton Mifflin, April 2005, winner of the Francis Parkman Prize and the Mark Lynton History Prize), Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, March 2013, winner … Read More »

The 2022 Hazel Rowley Prize Committee has named Laura Michele Diener as the winner of this year’s prize. The $2,000 prize is awarded annually to a first-time biographer and is accompanied by a careful reading from an established agent, a year’s membership in BIO, and publicity through the organization. Diener has won the award for her proposal for a biography of the Norwegian-Danish writer Sigrid Undset (1882–1949), whom the committee called “an extraordinary woman who… Read More »

The 2022 Caro Fellowship Committee, comprised of Carla Kaplan (chair), Marc Leepson, and Barbara Savage, has named two recipients for this year’s Robert and Ina Caro Research/Travel Fellowships. The fellowships, established in 2018, allow BIO members with works in progress to receive funding for research trips to archives or to important settings in their subjects’ lives. This fellowship is a reflection of BIO’s ongoing commitment to support authors in writing beautifully contextualized and tenaciously researched… Read More »