Six BIO members have new biographies out in May:

• Daniel Brook, The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin (W. W. Norton & Company)
• Ron Chernow, Mark Twain (Penguin Press)
• Patricia Hoerth Batchelder, Evelyn Beatrice Longman: The Woman Who Sculpted Golden Boy, Thomas Edison, and Other Monuments (Rowman & Littlefield)
• Mark Hussey, Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel (Manchester University Press)
• Stephen R. Platt, The Raider: The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II (Penguin Random House)
• Alex Vernon, Peace Is A Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O’Brien (St. Martin’s Press)

The latest episodes of the BIO Podcast are as follows:

• April 18: Dawn Porter, winner of the 2025 BIO Award, chats with A’Lelia Bundles. 
• April 25: BIO President Steve Paul talks with Jenny Skoog about the organization’s exciting new initiatives in 2025 and beyond. 
• May 2: Caitlin Cass and Lisa Napoli talk about different forms of biography with Jenny Skoog. 
• May 9: Filmmaker Janice Engel speaks about her documentary Raise HELL: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins, with Jenny Skoog. 

Debby Applegate will speak with Claire Hoffman, author of Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2025), on May 27, at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at CUNY in New York City. Learn more.

Jane Dismore’s new book, No Country For A Woman: The Adventurous Life of Lady Dorothy Mills, Explorer and Writer (The History Press), was released in the United Kingdom in March. It’s scheduled to be published in the United States in November.

Allison Gilbert will lead a conversation with #1 New York Times bestselling-author Gretchen Rubin about her new book on June 1, at The 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue (between 91st & 92nd streets), New York City. The event begins in person and online at 7:30 p.m. BIO members are welcome to attend! More information. 

Patricia Hoerth Batchelder will appear in Cast Hall Gallery at the New York Academy of Art on June 7, at 3 p.m., and at Chesterwood in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on June 11, at 5 p.m., to promote her new biography Evelyn Beatrice Longman: The Woman Who Sculpted Golden Boy, Thomas Edison, and Other Monuments (Rowman & Littlefield).

Sara Fitzgerald spoke in late April at Macomb Community College’s month-long program on “Leading Ladies of Michigan,” about her first biography, Elly Peterson: “Mother” of the Moderates (University of Michigan Press, 2011), and her nonfiction book, Conquering Heroines: How Women Fought Sex Bias at Michigan and Paved the Way for Title IX (University of Michigan Regional, 2020). Between May and July, she will be speaking about her latest biography, The Silenced Muse: Emily Hale, T. S. Eliot, and the Role of a Lifetime (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), at the International T. S. Eliot Summer School in Oxford, England (the annual conference of the International T. S. Eliot Society in Dublin), and at the annual meeting of the American Literature Association in Boston. 

BIO members Heath Lee, Diane Kiesel, and Vanda Krefft attended the Annapolis Book Festival at the Key School on May 3. Each spoke about their recent books. Susan Page also spoke at the festival.

Eileen Martin and Greer Rising co-wrote the essay “A Coded Message from Ernest Hemingway,” published in the latest edition of Princeton University Library’s Chronicle.

April Masten’s dual biography, Diamond and Juba: The Raucous World of 19th-Century Challenge Dancing, was sold to the University of Illinois Press and will be published this fall.

Diana Parsell spoke at a luncheon at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., on March 27, one of 18 local events this spring to promote her book Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington’s Cherry Trees (Oxford University Press, 2023).

BIO members Amy Reading and Patchen Barrs were recently featured on Gabriella Kelly-Davies’s podcast, Biographers in Conversation. Reading chatted about crafting The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker (HarperCollins, 2024), and Barss discussed researching and writing The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius (Basic Books, 2024). 

Marlene Trestman’s book, Most Fortunate Unfortunates: The Jewish Orphans’ Home of New Orleans (LSU Press, 2023), is the subject of a new special exhibition at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans. It opened in April and will run through the end of the year. Learn more.