Two BIO members have new biographies out in February: 

• Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Apostle of Liberation: AME Bishop Paul Quinn and the Underground Railroad (Rowman & Littlefield)
• Patrick McGilligan, Woody Allen: A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham (Harper)

The February episodes, to date, of the BIO Podcast are as follows:

• February 7: Samantha Ege, author of South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene (University of Illinois Press), interviewed by Sonja Williams.
• February 14: Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, author of Apostle of Liberation: AME Bishop Paul Quinn and the Underground Railroad (Rowman and Littlefield), interviewed by Kevin McGruder.
• February 21: Mary Frances Phillips, author of Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins (New York University Press), interviewed by Sonja Williams.

Caroline Baum’s podcast, Life Sentences, features Baum interviewing biographers, including “seasoned players and persistent newcomers who share their experience of navigating sensitive territory in the search for the real story behind a person’s life.”

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the landmark musical Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show’s creator and star, is sharing mementos from the play’s origins, including the original email he sent to Ron Chernow, whose biography of Alexander Hamilton served as the show’s basis.

Jonathan Eig gave a talk on February 10, at Tompkins County Public Library in Ithaca, New York, about his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography King: A Life.

Tim Greiving’s debut biography, John Williams: A Composer’s Life, will be released by Oxford University Press on September 1.

Megan Marshall, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Margaret Fuller, has released a memoir titled After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart. 

On February 13, Diana Parsell was a special guest at National Geographic’s ceremony honoring photographer Thomas Peschak with its 2025 Eliza Scidmore Award for outstanding storytelling. Parsell’s book, Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington’s Cherry Trees (Oxford University Press, 2023), tells the story of the first female board member of National Geographic, starting in 1892.

Pamela D. Toler’s The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany (Beacon Press, 2024) is one of five finalists for the 45th annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.

Alex Vernon’s biography of author Tim O’Brien, best known for his novel The Things They Carried, will be released by St. Martin’s Press on May 27.