In this week’s episode we interview Nigel Hamilton and Hans Renders, authors The ABC of Modern Biography. This interview was recorded during BIO’s May 2019 annual conference in New York City.
Photo by Mannus van der Laan
Here are some highlights from the 2019 BIO Conference, held in New York City on May 17-19. You can see the morning plenary with David Remnick, Stacy Schiff, and Judith Thurman, and Nigel Hamilton introducing 2019 BIO Award winner James McGrath Morris, who gave the keynote speech.
Among Lee’s other books is Biography: A Very Short Introduction.
Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee won the Plutarch Award for best biography of 2014, as selected by members of Biographers International Organization. The winning book was announced at the Sixth Annual BIO Conference in Washington, DC.
Named after the ancient Greek biographer, the prize is the genre’s equivalent of the Oscar, in that BIO members chose the winner by secret ballot from nominees selected by a committee of distinguished members of the craft. This year marked the third time BIO bestowed the award. Previous winners were Linda Leavell for Holding on Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore and Robert Caro for The Passage of Power.
Theresa Kaminski just released Dr. Mary Walker's Civil War: One Woman's Journey to the Medal of Honor and the Fight for Women's Rights.
BIO invited the 10 authors who had already signed up to read at the 2020 conference to record themselves reading three-minute excerpts from their books. As it happens, all 10 books are about women, both little-known and well-known. In order of presentation, the readers are Jerry Mikorenda, John Holliday, Kimberley Hamlin, Sunny Salter-Pace, Patricia Laurence, Marcia Biederman, Cathy Curtis, Carol Sklenicka, Bernice Lerner, and Carl Rollyson.
