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 #265 – Victoria Johnson
Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World is the latest book by this author and professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College in New York City. Johnson’s biography of Church, a highly regarded 19th-century painter and landscape artist, was published by Scribner in May 2026. Johnson also authored American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic,… Read More »
Podcast #264 – Andy Beta
Andy Beta is an award-winning arts and music writer. His newest book, Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane, was published in March by Da Capo. His writing on rock, jazz, experimental, and electronic music has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Texas Monthly, NPR, We Jazz magazine, and many more.… Read More »
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Podcast #263 – Steven C. Smith
Hitchcock & Herrmann: The Friendship & Film Scores That Changed Cinema was written by award-winning author Steven C. Smith. He is a four-time Emmy-nominated documentary producer of over 200 documentaries about film and music. Smith has collaborated with filmmakers Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Stephen Sondheim, John Williams, Julie Andrews, and Sidney Poitier. His biographies of composers Bernard Herrmann and Max Steiner each received the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award, and he has… Read More »
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Podcast #262 – Steven C. Bowie
Concerto for Cootie: The Life and Times of Cootie Williams, published by the University of Mississippi Press in October 2025, is this author’s exploration of the legendary trumpeter and longtime member of the Duke Ellington big band. A curator and host of the Duke Ellington-themed podcast Ellington Reflections, Bowie also has presented papers on Williams and Kenny Burrell for conferences held by the Duke Ellington Society of Sweden, and his articles have appeared… Read More »
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Podcast #261 – Mary Lisa Gavenas
Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay, published by Viking in April 2026, is this author’s latest book, which grew out of a fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. It’s a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and the book was praised by The Wall Street Journal, Texas Monthly, Lit Hub, and other outlets for its lively cultural history of midcentury America, making Kirkus’s list of “Nonfiction Books That… Read More »
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Podcast #260 – Jon Meacham, Part II
American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union, published by Random House in February 2026, is the latest book by this Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer and historian. Meacham has authored New York Times bestsellers, including And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle; Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power; American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House; Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship; Destiny and Power: … Read More »
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Podcast #259 – Jon Meacham, Part I
American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union, published by Random House in February 2026, is the latest book by this Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer and historian. Meacham has authored New York Times bestsellers, including And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle; Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power; American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House; Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship; Destiny and Power: … Read More »
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Podcast #258 – Hester Kaplan
This author’s Twice Born: Finding My Father in the Margins of Biography was published by Catapult Press in October 2025. Kaplan has authored novels and story collections, including The Edge of Marriage, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories series. She is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Awards, and she was… Read More »
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Podcast #257 – Adam Henig
Baseball’s Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore is this author’s latest book, published by Bloomsbury Academic in April 2026. Henig has also penned the well-received Watergate’s Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night Watchman, as well as Alex Haley’s Roots: An Author’s Odyssey, and Baseball Under Siege: The Yankees, the Cardinals, and a Doctor’s Battle to Integrate Spring Training. His writings have appeared in Time, Tampa Bay Times, Washington Independent Review of Books… Read More »
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Podcast #256 – Gayle Feldman
Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built is the latest book by veteran journalist and author Gayle Feldman. Published by Random House in January 2026, this biography explores the life of a driven young man who vowed to become a great publisher – and did. Feldman has served as a senior staff editor for Publishers Weekly and a U.S. correspondent for The Bookseller. Her features, reviews, and essays have appeared in… Read More »
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