September 17th, 2021
In this week’s episode we interview Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Professor of Biography and English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Working with 19 other authors, her book of edited biographies, Britain’s Black Past, was published by Liverpool University Press in March 2020. She also has published nine other books, including Carrington: A Life; Black London: Life Before Emancipation; Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden; and Mr. and Mrs. Price: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Family Moved Out of Slavery and into Legend. Gretchen Gerzina was interviewed, via Zoom, on July 14, 2021, by writer and BIO member Sonja Williams.
Published under:
Tags: authors, biographers, biography, Britain's Black Past, Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, podcast, writers
September 3rd, 2021
In this week’s episode, we interview Tamara Payne. Working with her late father, the award-winning and New York-based print journalist Les Payne, Tamara Payne co-wrote The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X. Published in October 2020 by Liveright, this biography of the charismatic and controversial Muslim leader known as Malcolm X earned a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Tamara Payne was interviewed in her home in New York City on July 16, 2021, by writer and BIO member Sonja Williams.
Published under:
Tags: biographers, biography, Malcolm X, podcast, Tamara Payne, The Dead Are Arising, writers
August 20th, 2021
In this week’s episode, we interview Dinyar Patel, history professor at the S. B. Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai, India, and the author of Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, published in May 2020 by Harvard University Press. Dinyar Patel was interviewed in his Mumbai home on July 15, 2021, via Zoom by writer and BIO member Sonja Williams.
Published under:
Tags: authors, biographers, biography, Dinyar Patel, Naoroji, podcast, writers
August 6th, 2021
Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. She also is the author of several acclaimed books, including The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and the Anisfield-Wolf Nonfiction Book Award. Gordon-Reed lives in New York and Cambridge, and her latest book, On Juneteenth, was published by Liveright in May 2021.
Photo by Tony Rinaldo
Published under:
Tags: Annette Gordon-Reed, authors, biographers, biography, On Juneteenth, podcast, writers
July 23rd, 2021
In this week’s episode, we interview Stephen Budiansky, a veteran historian, biographer, and journalist who has published 15 books, including his current biography, Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel, published by W.W. Norton & Company in May 2021. His writing also has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and he is a Guggenheim Fellow. Budiansky was interviewed in his Loudoun County, Virginia, home via Zoom on July 8, 2021, by BIO member Sonja Williams.
Photo by Martha Polkey
Published under:
Tags: authors, biographers, biography, Kurt Godel, podcast, Stephen Budiansky, writers
July 9th, 2021
In this week’s episode, we interview Kerri Greenidge, author of Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter, published November 19, 2019, by Liveright/Norton. Greenidge was interviewed via Zoom on June 28, 2021, by writer and BIO member Sonja Williams.
Photo by Matthew Guillory
Published under:
Tags: authors, biographers, biography, Black Radical, Kerri Greenidge, podcast, William Monroe Trotter, writers
June 4th, 2021
In this week’s episode, we interview Patrick Parr, author of One Week in America: The 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival and a Changing Nation, published March 2021 by Chicago Review Press. Parr’s narrative is a day-by-day examination of a week that began with President Lyndon B. Johnson announcement that he would not seek re-election and ended with the fallout created by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s the assassination. Parr includes never-before-published letters from festival attendees Joseph Heller (Catch-22), Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man), Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five), and Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead). Parr was interviewed via Zoom in his home in Yokohama, Japan, on February 25, 2021 by writer and BIO member Lisa Napoli.
Published under:
Tags: authors, biographers, biography, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, One Week in America, Patrick Parr, podcast, Ralph Ellison, writers
May 21st, 2021
In this week’s episode we interview Alison M. Parker, author of Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell, published by the University of North Carolina Press in December 2020. Parker’s book is the first full-length biography of Terrell, one of the most prominent African American activists of her time, and whose career bridged the late nineteenth century to the civil rights movement of the 1950s. Parker, a history professor and department chair at the University of Delaware, was interviewed by BIO member Lisa Napoli via Zoom in April 2021.
Published under:
Tags: Alison M. Parker, authors, biographers, biography, Mary Church Terrell, podcast, writers
