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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »