Welcome! Here’s where you’ll find fascinating discussions with biographers from around the country and the world.
If you are a member of BIO and would like to talk about your recently released biography, please contact Sonja Williams here.
Podcast #209 – James McGrath Morris
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 »
Podcast #208 – Ray Anthony Shepard
This award-winning author of biographers for young readers talks about his writing career and his long-term service as a founding BIO board member. His most recent book, A Long Time Coming: A Lyrical Biography of Race in America From Ona Judge to Barack Obama, was published by Calkins Creek in August 2023. Shepard initiated and organized BIO’s exciting forthcoming regional conference, Telling the Stories of Black Lives through Biography. Scheduled for March 21-22, 2025,… Read More »
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Podcast #207 – Jared Stearns
This first-time biographer’s, Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers, explores the untold story of the world’s most famous X-rated star. Chambers rose to fame as the face of Ivory Snow laundry detergent and the star of the X-rated film, Behind the Green Door. Stearns’s book was published by Headpress in May 2024. As a former journalist, Jared Stearns currently serves as the editor of BIO’s newsletters, The Biographer’s Craft and The Insider… Read More »
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Podcast #206 – Alexis Pauline Gumbs
This scholar and author’s latest book, Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in August 2024. As a queer Black feminist love evangelist, Gumbs has written four earlier books, including Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, which won the 2022 Whiting Award in Non-Fiction. Gumbs is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize in Poetry, the National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship,… Read More »
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Podcast #205 – Mary Frances Phillips
This historian and author’s Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins, was published in January 2025 by New York University Press. It examines the life and legacy of one of the longest-serving women members of the Black Panther Party. Huggins also is an educator, poet, mother, and a former political prisoner. As a first-time biographer, Mary Phillips serves as an associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois,… Read More »
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Podcast #204 – Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
This award-winning archaeologist, author and scholar talks about her latest book, Apostle of Liberation: AME Bishop Paul Quinn and the Underground Railroad. Published by Rowman and Littlefield this month, this biography explores the life of a larger-than-life leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church – a man who actively supported the education of enslaved Black Americans and their freedom struggles during and after slavery. LaRoche also authored Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: … Read More »
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Podcast #203 – Samantha Ege
This award-winning musicologist, internationally recognized concert pianist, and London-based popular public speaker talks about her first book, South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene, published by the University of Illinois Press in November 2024. Ege is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, and she is a leading scholar of African American composer Florence B. Price within the context of the Black Chicago Renaissance (1930-1950) and Black women’s dynamic… Read More »
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Podcast #202 – Diane Kiesel
Author, professor and retired New York Supreme Court judge, Diane Kiesel, talks about her latest book, When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law. It is set to be published in February 2025 by the University of Michigan Press. While serving as a judge, Kiesel continued her career as a writer of non-fiction that began years before when she was a journalist in Washington, D.C. where… Read More »
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Podcast #201 – Mark Clifford
This author’s biography, The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic, was published by Simon & Schuster in December 2024. Clifford is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, and he served as the executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council and as a board director at Next Digital, the Hong Kong media giant founded and majority-owned by Jimmy… Read More »
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Podcast 200 – Max Boot
This historian, best-selling author and foreign-policy analyst talks about his latest book, Reagan: His Life and Legend. Published by Liveright in September 2024, this biography was recognized as one of the Ten Best Books of this year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post and the Economist. Boot’s previous biography, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, also was a New York Times… Read More »
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