Two BIO members have new biographies out this month:  

• Aidan Levy, Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins (Hachette Books) 

• Edward J. O’Shea, Seamus Heaney’s American Odyssey (Routledge) 

And Stefanie Van Steelandt had a new biography come out on November 6: Lady of the Army: The Life of Mrs. George S. Patton (Minnegate Press). 

Judy Pearson has a new book deal: She sold Mary Lasker: The Woman Who Healed America to the Mayo Clinic Press (Dani Segelbaum at Carol Mann Agency was the agent).  

 

Additionally: 

Patti Bender has a publication date for her literary biography called Happy Landings: Emilie Loring’s Life, Writing, and Wisdom: March 14, 2023, by City Point Press.

Arthur Hoyle reviewed The Hyacinth Girl: T. S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse (W. W. Norton & Company, November 2022) by Lyndall Gordon for the New York Journal of Books.

Linda Leavell visited a class called “The Curator’s Toolkit” via Zoom at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, on November 15, 2022, to share her experience using the Marianne Moore archives there.

Aidan Levy, author of Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins (Hachette, December 2022), celebrated the launch of the biography with a conversation featuring musician James Brandon Lewis at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. A recording of the event is available here.

Andrew Lownie appeared on GB News to discuss what he believes the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan means for the British monarchy.

Pamela Newkirk interviewed Jennifer Homans, author of Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (Random House, 2022), for an event at the CUNY Leon Levy Center for Biography. A recording of the event is available here.

Nick Reynolds wished to share this update: “I took a detour from publishing biographies (most recently the partial Hemingway biography Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy, published by William Morrow in 2017, which was a New  York Times bestseller) to write Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence, published by Mariner Books on September 6 of this year. It has been praised by readers for telling the larger story through brief biographies of the main characters.  Amy Sorkin reviewed it favorably in an article on the CIA’s 75th anniversary in The New Yorker’s October 3 issue.”  

Eric K. Washington was interviewed by CBS New York regarding “his mission to landmark one of the city’s last standing schools for Black children from the 1800s,” former Colored School No. 4 in Chelsea. 

The December episodes of the BIO Podcast are as follows:  

• December 2: Mark Clague, author of O Say Can You Hear: A Cultural Biography of “The Star-Spangled Banner” (W. W. Norton, 2022), interviewed by Sonja Williams 
• December 9: Winston James, author of Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik (Columbia University Press, 2022), interviewed by Kitty Kelley 
• December 16: Anastasia Curwood, author of Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Political Power (forthcoming from University of North Carolina Press, January 2023), interviewed by Sonja Williams 
• December 23: Iris Jamahl Dunkle, author of Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020), interviewed by Jennifer Skoog 
• December 30: Gene Andrew Jarrett, author of Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird (Princeton University Press, 2022), interviewed by Kevin McGruder