The following BIO members have new books out this month:

• Tanisha C. Ford, Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement (Amistad)
• Dana Greene, Jane Kenyon: The Making of a Poet (University of Illinois Press)
• Will Hermes,Lou Reed: The King of New York (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Kenneth Miller, Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep (Hachette Books)
• Marlene Trestman, Most Fortunate Unfortunates: The Jewish Orphans’ Home of New Orleans (LSU Press)
• Susan Wilson, Women and Children First: The Trailblazing Life of Susan Dimock, M. D. (McFarland)
• Gretchen Woelfle, How Benjamin Franklin Became a Revolutionary in Seven (Not-So-Easy) Steps (Calkins Creek)

Several BIO members have new paperback editions out this month:

• Stephen H. Grant, Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger (Johns Hopkins University Press)
• Jon Meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (Random House Trade Paperbacks)
• Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams (Back Bay Books)
• Sydney Ladensohn Stern, Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics, and Mystique (Open Road Media)

Three BIO members have new book deals:

• William R. Cross sold Tiffany: American Impresario, a biography of Louis Comfort Tiffany, to Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Carolyn Savarese at Calligraph was the agent).
• Alex Vernon sold Peace is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O’Brien to St. Martin’s Press (Timothy Wojcik at Levine Greenberg Rostan was the agent).
• Jane Dismore sold her biography of Lady Dorothy “Dolly” Mills to The History Press. The proposal for this book won a 2021 Antonia Fraser Grant from the Society of Authors for a work-in-progress of a biography of a woman or women.

The October episodes of the BIO Podcast are:

• October 6, Jonathan Eig, author of King: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 2023), in conversation with Kevin McGruder.
• October 13, Angela V. John, author of War, Journalism, and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century: The Life and Times of Henry W. Nevinson (Bloomsbury, February 2023), in conversation with Lisa Napoli.
• October 20, Paul Fisher, author of The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, November 2022), in conversation with Jennifer Skoog.
• October 27, Caleb J. Gayle, author of We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity and Power (Riverhead, June 2023), interviewed by Sonja Williams.

Additionally:

Neil Baldwin discussed his biography Martha Graham: When Dance Became Modern for a PillowTalk event hosted by Jacob’s Pillow. He was interviewed by Jacob’s Pillow scholar-in-residence Maura Keefe. A video of the event is now available here.

Tom Chaffin won the 2023 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Memoir/Biography for his book Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and the Voyage that Changed the World (Pegasus Books). He also published an essay in the Sunday Boston Globe’s “Ideas” section, which you can read here.

Aleta George convened a panel for the Jack London Society’s 16th Biennial Symposium at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California, which ran from October 5 to October 8. The panel discussed the significance of Jack London’s longtime valet, Yoshimatsu Nakata, and featured three professors from Japan discussing Nakata’s legacy.

Arthur Hoyle has published new reviews for the New York Journal of Books: one of Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today by Nick Groom and one of Annie Ernaux’s The Young Man.

Christopher Klein appeared as a guest on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s All in the Mind podcast to discuss the origins of Stockholm Syndrome. The episode is available here.

Eileen Martin co-wrote and published an article with her husband, Greer Rising, for the Military Review: “Pen and Sword: The Symbiosis between Ernest Hemingway and Maj. Gen. Buck Lanham.” You can read it here.

Steve Paul spoke on a panel about transforming research into narrative at the Kansas City (MO) Public Library’s Heartland Book Festival in October. His article, “Remembering William Stafford,” the poet who’s the subject of Steve’s current biography in progress, appeared on Literary Hub on August 28.  Steve also posted an article on his website about Stafford’s connection to J. Robert Oppenheimer. To round out his recent activity, Steve posted a paper he presented at the World of Bob Dylan 2023 Symposium in Tulsa. You can read it here.

Raquel Ramsey is working with Vanilla Ice Productions as an executive director, to bring her biography of her late sister-in-law—Taking Flight: The Nadine Ramsey Story—to the screen. Learn more here.

David O. Stewart received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Washington Independent Review of Books at the 2023 Washington Writers Conference. Learn more here.

Rachel L. Swarns participated in an event at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, on October 17, with Nicholas Lehmann, in which they discussed her book—The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church (Random House). Swarns also appeared in conversation with Khalil Gibran Muhammad at the Montclair Library Open Book / Open Mind event on October 14. A recording of that conversation is available here.