Member News and Notes, February 2023

Two BIO members have new books out this month:   

  •  Michael Burgan, Who Was John McCain? (Penguin Workshop) 
  • Gretchen Woelfle, A Take-Charge Girl Blazes a Trail to Congress: The Story of Jeannette Rankin (Calkins Creek). 

Additionally, Paula Tarnapol Whitacre contributed a chapter to the new, edited-volume Clara Barton: Civil War Humanitarian (National Museum of Civil War Medicine Press). 

 

Two BIO members have new paperback editions out:  

  • Irwin Gellman, Campaign of the Century: Kennedy, Nixon, and the Election of 1960 (Yale University Press) 
  • Marc Leepson, Ballad of the Green Beret (a biography of Barry Sadler, Stackpole Books). 

 

Karen Torghele secured a book deal: she sold Albert Sabin: A Fierce Joy to Yale University Press (Andrew Zack at The Zack Company was the agent). And Judy Pearson sold her Mary Lasker biography to Mayo Clinic Press (Dani Segelbaum at Carol Mann Agency was the agent). 

 

Additionally: 

Nigel Cameron has a new substack newsletter titled “Nigel’s Lives,” which is about: “Lives, ours and others’, present and past. On biography, on autobiography. Sometimes on the lives of other species. And how we engage with technology.” You can subscribe here.  

 

Nigel Hamilton was a featured author at the 2023 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival. 

 

Eve M. Kahn’s exhibition about her biography subject—writer/reformer/publisher/bon vivant Zoe Anderson Norris (1860–1914)—runs March 1 to May 13, at New York City’s Grolier Club. BIO members and other enthusiasts can contact Kahn for customized exhibition tours and further information through her website: www.evekahn.com. 

 

Bernice Lerner gave a talk titled “A Great Experiment in Educating Teenage Refugees: The Case of a Swedish International School for Seattle’s Holocaust Center for Humanity.” A recording can be found here. She gave in-person International Holocaust Remembrance Day talks on “The Meaning of Liberation: From Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen” in Tallahassee and at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and a virtual talk: “Broadcast and Top Secret: Displaced Persons, The Truman Administration, and the Pursuit of a Jewish Homeland,” at Temple Beth El in Fort Myers, FL.

 

Jon Meacham appeared on the PBS show “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover” to discuss his work in the context of our times.

 

Carl Rollyson released an episode of his “A Life in Biography” podcast that focuses on the life of the late Marion Meade. The episode features tributes from BIO members Mary Dearborn, Diane Jacobs, Sydney Ladensohn Stern, and Amanda Vaill.  

 

Eric K. Washington has several upcoming events:  

  • February 10, 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.: a lecture (in person) on “The History of Black Railroad Station Porters and Grand Central Terminal” (based on Washington’s book Boss of the Grips), at the Sachem Public Library, Holbrook, Long Island, New York. To attend, register here. 
  • February 17, 12:00 to 1:30 p.m.: a lecture (virtual) on Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal. To attend, register here. 
  • February 23, 1:00 to 2:30 p.m.: a lecture (virtual) on the “Legacy of the Former ‘Colored’ School No. 4” (a 19th-century Black heritage site in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood). To attend, register here.     

 

Susan Wider won the Young Adult Lit­er­a­ture Award for It’s My Whole Life: Char­lotte Salomon: An Artist in Hid­ing Dur­ing World War II (Nor­ton Young Read­ers) as part of the 72nd National Jewish Book Awards.

 

 The following is a list of the February episodes of BIO Podcast:  

  • February 3: Wanda A. Hendricks, author of The Life of Madie Hall Xuma: Black Women’s Global Activism During Jim Crow and Apartheid (University of Indiana Press, 2022), interviewed by Sonja Williams.
  • February 10: Kostya Kennedy, author of True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson (St. Martin’s Press, 2022), interviewed by Kevin McGruder. 
  • February 17: Marilyn Greenwald and Yun Li, co-authors of Eunice Hunton Carter: A Lifelong Fight for Social Justice (Empire State Editions, 2021), interviewed by Lisa Napoli. 
  • February 24: Lerita Coleman Brown, author of What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman (Broadleaf Books, 2023), interviewed by Kevin McGruder.