Ileene Smith, winner of BIO’s 2019 Editorial Excellence Award, received her award on November 13 at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Smith has been vice president and executive editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux since 2012. She is also editorial director of the Jewish Lives series published by Yale University Press and the Leon D. Black Foundation. Smith has previously been the recipient of the PEN/Roger Klein Award, the Tony Godwin Memorial Award, and a Jerusalem Fellowship.
The Leon Levy Center for Biography, part of the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY), is seeking an executive director who will also have the title of distinguished lecturer. In announcing the job opening, CUNY said the preferred candidate “will be a renowned biographer who can serve as an articulate spokesperson for the Leon Levy Center for Biography and for the genre of biography and can solidify The Graduate Center’s reputation as the pre-eminent institution devoted to the study and promotion of biography. The director will be a practitioner who has thoughtfully considered issues in biographical writing and the place of biography in the academy and in contemporary literary culture.” The search committee for the position, led by David Nasaw, will begin reviewing resumes on August 10 and plans to conduct interview during September. For more information and to apply, go here.
Biographers International Organization has a worldwide membership of biographers. We also welcome those working on documentaries and biographies for young adults or children. Whether you're a writer, editor, or agent, first-timer or veteran, published or unpublished, aspiring or merely looking, BIO is here for you.
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Whatever state your biography’s in—vague idea, proposal, well underway—BIO’s experienced biographers can help. BIO offers a one-hour phone or email mentoring session for US$80. (The cost of any additional sessions can be worked out with your mentor.) Email Cathy Curtis with a brief statement about the nature of your project and your goals for the one-hour session.
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Sydney Ladensohn Stern's new book is The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics.
Hendrik “Hank” Meijer recently spoke at the Ripon Society in Washington, D.C., about his Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century.
