Two BIO members have new biographies out this month:  

• George R. Matthews, Billy the Kid: The Life Behind the Legend (McFarland) 
• Jon Meacham, The Call to Serve: The Life of an American President, George Herbert Walker Bush: A Visual Biography (Random House) 

Several BIO members recently closed book deals:  

• Nigel M. de S. Cameron sold Dr. Koop (a biography of Charles Everett Koop) to the University of Massachusetts Press. 
• Patrick Parr sold Malcolm Before X to the University of Massachusetts Press. 
• Janice P. Nimura sold Knowing Her Place (a biography of Rachel Carson and her 19th-century foremothers in science) to Random House. Rob McQuilkin at Massie & McQuilkin was the agent.  

The May episodes of the BIO Podcast are as follows:  

• May 3, Scott Shane, author of Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery’s Borderland (Celadon Press, 2023), interviewed by Jennifer Skoog.  
• May 10, Hampton Sides, author of The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook (Doubleday, 2024), interviewed by James McGrath Morris.  
• May 17, Judith Tick, author of Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song (W. W. Norton & Company, 2023), interviewed by Sonja Williams. 
• May 24, Barbara D. Savage, author of Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar (Yale University Press, 2023), interviewed by A’Lelia Bundles.   

Two BIO members have upcoming book events: 

Sara Fitzgerald spoke on a panel about writing non-fiction at the 2024 Washington Writers Conference in Bethesda, MD, on May 3. She also /will participate on a panel at the American Literature Conference in Chicago on May 24, talking about her forthcoming biography The Silenced Muse: Emily Hale, T. S. Eliot, and the Role of a Lifetime (Rowman & Littlefield, September 2024). The panel is sponsored by the International T. S. Eliot Society. 

Eric K. Washington will be featured on a panel at the New York Public Library’s Biography Open House alongside Susannah Cahalan, focused on the symbiotic relationship between biographers and research libraries. The evening is dedicated to biographers and individuals interested in biography research.  The event takes place on Wednesday, May 15 (the eve of the BIO Conference), from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Room 216.  Learn more here. 

To recap, the following BIO members recently received awards or fellowships:  

• Jonathan Eig and Ilyon Woo both received Pulitzer Prizes in Biography. 
• Nicholas Boggs was named a 2024–2025 Fellow of the National Humanities Center. 
• Leah Redmond Chang was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. 
• Rachel L. Swarns was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

More information about these members’ accomplishments is available in this month’s newsletter.   

Additionally: 

Natalie Dykstra discussed her book, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner (Mariner Books, March 2024), with Rachel Cohen at the CUNY Graduate center on April 18. A recording of the event is available here.  

Stephanie Gorton reviewed Inconceivable: Super Sperm Donors, Off-the-Grid Insemination, and Unconventional Family Planning by Valerie Bauman (Union Square & Co., 2024) and Doing It All: The Social Power of Single Motherhood by Ruby Russell (Seal Press, 2024) for The New Republic. Read more here.  

An excerpt of Bridget Quinn’s new biography, Portrait of a Woman: Art, Rivalry, and Revolution in the Life of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (Chronicle Books, 2024), was published on Hyperallergic. You can read it here.