The BIO members with new biographies out this month are Allison Gilbert, co-author (with Julia Scheeres) of Listen, World!: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman (Seal Press); and Greg King, co-author (with Penny Wilson) of Nothing But The Night: Leopold & Loeb and the Truth Behind the Murder that Rocked 1920s America (St. Martin’s Press).

Additionally, two BIO members have paperback editions of their biographies coming out in September: John Oller, with Rogues’ Gallery: The Birth of Modern Policing and Organized Crime in Gilded Age New York (Dutton); and Steve Paul, with Literary Alchemist: The Writing Life of Evan S. Connell (University of Missouri Press).

Two BIO members have recently secured new book deals: Marcia Biederman, for The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill: Abortion, Death, and Concealment in Victorian New England, which was sold to Chicago Review Press by Amanda Jain at Bookends; and Susan Blumberg-Kason, for Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China (a biography of Bernardine Szold Fritz), which was sold to Post Hill Press by Alicia Brooks at Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency.

In other news:

Debby Applegate, author of Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age (Doubleday, 2021), has curated a digital exhibit of Al Hirschfeld’s sketches of Polly Adler’s friends for the Al Hirschfeld Foundation. The exhibition can be viewed here.

A’Lelia Bundles was interviewed by ABC News regarding the release of the Barbie doll made in honor of her great-great grandmother, Madam C. J. Walker. “We were able to really combine the knowledge that I’ve developed as Madam Walker’s biographer, with their incredible knowledge of marketing and telling a story through a doll,” she told ABC News.

Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Vintage, 2020), is holding a two-hour Zoom Masterclass for Arvon called “Masterclass: Writing Sylvia Plath,” on Friday, October 21, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. BST (6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. EST). More information is available here.

Sara Day published an article about her latest book, Not Irish Enough: An Anglo-Irish Family’s Three Centuries in Ireland (Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2021) in The Irish Times Online. Further information about the book, which will be reviewed in Tipperary Historical Journal 2022, can be found on her website: www.saradayauthor.com.

Kitty Kelley reviewed Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom (Simon & Schuster, 2022) by Andrew Nagorski, for the Washington Independent Review of Books.

Rowena Kennedy-Epstein is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant. The NEH has awarded her $60,000 to continue researching and writing her biography, Mother of Us All: The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser.

Louise (Lucy) Knight learned in June that the Chicago PBS station, WTTW, has decided to do a one-hour documentary about Jane Addams. The interview with Lucy, which lasted three and a half hours and was taped in her condo, took place in August, and the documentary will be aired next spring (if all goes as planned). On the Grimke sisters front, Lucy put the Ohio State Supreme Court in touch with a Grimke descendant in Europe, who has a portrait of the sisters’ brother Judge Frederick Grimke. The descendant would like to find a new home for the portrait and the court, where Grimke was a judge for some years, has decided to accept the donation and add the painting to its art collection—a satisfying outcome.

Heath Lee, who is working on a biography of Pat Nixon, interviewed retired Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor, about Richard Nixon and his Vietnam policy.

Alec Nevala-Lee was interviewed by Deborah Kalb about his new biography, Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller (Dey Street Books, August 2022).

Raquel Ramsey is working on a documentary based on her biography Taking Flight: The Nadine Ramsey Story (University Press of Kansas, 2020). Ramsey is an executive producer on the project, which is being made with Vanilla Ice Productions. Jane Seymour will be the narrator. About the project, Ramsey said, “We have resumed interviews and filming with the Nadine display at the WASP [Women Airforce Service Pilots] Museum in May 2022, and then the interview of Erin Miller, whose grandmother, Elaine Harmon, was the first WASP buried in Arlington National Cemetery after the passage of a law by Congress, on May 20, 2016. My co-author, Tricia Aurand, and Terry Rinehart, daughter of Barbara J. London, Commander of the Ferrying Command in Long Beach, will also be interviewed in October.”

Abigail Santamaria is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant. The NEH has awarded her $60,000 to continue researching and writing her biography, I AM MEG: The Life of Madeleine L’Engle.

Brad Snyder, author of Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment (W. W. Norton & Company, August 2022), wrote the following op-ed for Politico: “The Supreme Court Has Too Much Power and Liberals Are to Blame.”

Sue Stein’s On Distant Service: The Life of the First U. S. Foreign Service Officer to be Assassinated (University of Nebraska Press, 2020) was released in the audio version, in July 2022, through Findaway, a division of Spotify. It is available at numerous retailers such as Google Play, Nook, Walmart/Kobo, and Audiobooks. Stein’s audiobook was narrated and produced by one of her former students, Bryan Carmody, now a voice-over actor headquartered in Chicago.

Gayle Wald is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant. The NEH has awarded her $60,000 to continue researching and writing her biography, This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins’ Life in Music.

Martha Wolfe recently published an interview with another BIO member, Kathleen C. Stone, about Stone’s new book, They Called Us Girls: Stories of Female Ambition from Suffrage to Mad Men, in The Arts Fuse.

 

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