This week we interview journalist Kostya Kennedy, author of True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson, published by St. Martin’s Press, in April 2022. Kennedy is an editorial director at Dotdash Meredith and a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He is also the New York Times–bestselling author of 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports (a runner–up for the 2012 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing) and Pete … Read More »

This week we interview Wanda A. Hendricks, Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of South Carolina and author of The Life of Madie Hall Xuma: Black Women’s Global Activism During Jim Crow and Apartheid, published by the University of Illinois Press (UIP) in October 2022. Hendricks has served as the National Director of the Association of Black Women Historians, and senior editor of the three-volume Black Women In America: Second Edition, published by Oxford… Read More »

This special episode features excerpts from a spirited conversation between USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page and fellow award-winning biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell. His latest book, Ted Kennedy: A Life, is a fascinating exploration of the life and times of the former icon of the Senate and Kennedy family member, and it was published by Penguin Press in October 2022. This live, in-person interview was recorded on November 15, 2022,… Read More »

This time we interview Susan Page, an award-winning journalist and USA Today’s Washington Bureau Chief. Page has written biographies of the influential former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former first lady Barbara Bush. Currently, Page is working on a biography of Barbara Walters—the iconic broadcast journalist who passed away in December 2022. Susan Page’s biography of Walters will be published by Simon & Schuster either by the end of this year… Read More »

This week we feature a special episode with BIO’s 2022 Plutarch Award-winner Frances Wilson. Her latest book, Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is considered to be an electrifying and revelatory new biography of the English writer. Wilson, a London-based critic, journalist, and author of several award-winning nonfiction works, was interviewed by Nigel Hamilton, a British-born, American-based biographer, academic, and broadcaster. He is the author of… Read More »

Happy New Year! We’re pleased to start this year with a special episode featuring Pulitzer Prize Award-winning biographer Megan Marshall. During BIO’s virtual conference last year, Marshall received our organization’s highest honor: the BIO Award. Each year this award recognizes outstanding authors for their contributions to the art and craft of biography. Megan Marshall accepted the award with a speech recorded at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. She was introduced by fellow biographer and… Read More »

This week we interview Gene Andrew Jarrett, Dean of the Faculty and William S. Tod Professor of English at Princeton University. His latest book, Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird, published in October 2022 by Princeton University Press, examines the Gilded Age writer known as the poet laureate of his race. Jarrett also authored Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature and Deans and Truants: … Read More »

This week we interview Iris Jamahl Dunkle, the former Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, California, and an award-winning author. Dunkle’s biography about the artist and wife of famed writer Jack London, titled, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in September 2020. Iris Jamahl Dunkle has authored four poetry collections, including, West : Fire : Archive, and she was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.    … Read More »

This week we interview Anastasia Curwood, Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and author of Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics, scheduled for publication by the University of North Carolina Press in January 2023. Curwood has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. Her first book, Stormy Weather: Middle-Class … Read More »

This week we interview Winston James, author of Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik, published by Columbia University Press in July 2022. A Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, James also authored, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America, winner of the Gordon K. Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship from the Caribbean Studies Association. His three other books examined pioneering Pan-Africanist writer… Read More »