Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry is literary critic Adam Plunkett’s first biography. His exploration of the life and creativity of one of America’s favorite 20th-century poets was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in February 2025. Plunkett received fellowship support from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Leon Levy Center for Biography, and he has written for The Poetry Foundation, The Point, The … Read More »

In this special episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, National Humanities Medal recipient, and New York University history professor emeritus David Levering Lewis discusses his latest book—a sweeping exploration of his own family history. The Stained Glass Window: A Family History as the American Story: 1790-1958 was published by Penguin Random House in February 2025. Lewis received Pulitzers for his W. E. B. Du Bois biographies, and his extraordinary body of work, including 11 books, has been… Read More »

This award-winning filmmaker, showrunner and Academy of Art University professor, talks about her documentary film, Raise HELL: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019 and won the Audience Award at SXSW, along with numerous other festival awards and screenings in England and Ireland. Raise HELL reflects themes Engel holds dear, speaking truth to power, igniting activism, advocacy and finding our shared humanity. Engel’s work includes non-fiction… Read More »

These authors talk about a few of the different forms of biography. Caitlin Cass’s graphic book, Suffrage Song: The Haunted History of Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the U.S., was named a Best Art Book of 2024 by Hyperallergic. Since 2009, Cass has self-published a bi-monthly comic periodical called the Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent, and her comics and cartoons have been published in The New Yorker and The … Read More »

As the president of the Biographers International Organization, Steve Paul talks about the organization’s exciting new initiatives in 2025 and beyond. Paul spent more than 40 years in daily journalism and now, as an independent scholar, he is devoted to literary biography. His most recent book, Literary Alchemist: The Writing Life of Evan S. Connell (University of Missouri Press), won the 2022 Society of Midland Authors Award. He also co-edited a collection of scholarly… Read More »

This celebrated documentary filmmaker is the recipient of the 2025 BIO Award – Biographers International Organization’s annual recognition of a distinguished colleague who has made significant contributions to the art and craft of biography. Dawn Porter’s documentaries include rich biographical explorations of John Lewis, Lady Bird Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy and Luther Vandross. For her impressive body of work, Porter has earned Peabody, NAACP and Gracie Awards, along with the National Humanities Medal, the Critics’… Read More »

These celebrated authors talk about BIO’s Plutarch Award for Biography – the organization’s annual recognition of the year’s best biography, as determined by a committee of five distinguished biographers from nominations by BIO members and publishers. First time biographer and British Ghanaian journalist Yepoka Yeebo took home BIO’s 2024 Plutarch Award for her book, Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington and Swindled the World (Bloomsbury, 2023). The book also was shortlisted… Read More »

These guests talk about the awards that BIO offers for biographers. Heather Clarks is an author, literary critic and chair of BIO’s awards committee. Her most recent book, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, was one of the New York Times Ten Best Books (2021), and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She has won the… Read More »

These pivotal BIO members share their experience as co-chairs of BIO’s June 5-6, 2025 annual conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Linda Leavell served as BIO’s president from 2019 to 2023, and her biography of American poet Marianne Moore, Holding On Upside Down, won BIO’s Plutarch Award for the best biography of the year, the PEN award for biography, and the Modernist Studies Association book award. With fellow biographer, professor emerita and … Read More »

In this special episode, BIO’s former president and one of the organization’s founders, talks about the history of BIO and its influence. In 2019 McGrath Morris received the BIO Award, annually presented to a writer who has made a major contribution to the advancement of the art and craft of biography. His award-winning books have included Tony Hillerman: A Life; The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and A Friendship Made and Lost in Wa… Read More »