BIO Conference Preview: Writing the First Biography of Your Subject: A Q&A with Debby Applegate and Abigail Santamaria
Debby Applegate
Debby Applegate is the author of The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (Doubleday, 2006), winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography; and Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age (forthcoming from Doubleday, November 2, 2021). Abigail Santamaria is the author of Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), and I Am Meg: The Life of Madeleine L’Engle (forthcoming, Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Debby will moderate the conference panel “Writing the First Biography of Your Subject,” which will feature Abigail, Justin Gifford, and Carol Sklenicka.
Abigail Santamaria
Abigail Santamaria: Tell me a bit about the subjects of your two books. What writings about their lives preceded your work?
Debby Applegate: The subject of my first book, the once world-famous Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, had many biographies before me, ranging in quality and orientation from hagiography to hatchet job. But he’d been assigned to the dustbin of history after a national sex scandal, so no one, not even scholars, had looked at them in many decades. It was the best of both worlds: lots of shoulders to stand on, but plenty of freedom to do my own fact-gathering and form my own opinions.
My new book is the first biography of Polly Adler, an infamous and influential madam in Jazz Age New York, whose brothel was a bawdy salon as well as, in her words, a “speakeasy with a harem conveniently handy.” But she did publish a bestselling 1953 memoir, A House is Not a Home, which gave me a foundation, however faulty. Surprisingly, given her underworld occupation, she was shockingly well-documented in newspapers, memoirs, criminal records, FBI files, and other sources. So, it was easy to indulge that first biographer obsession with finding every tiny scrap of her life. Too easy, really, since in the end I spent 14 years on that obsession, even knowing I could include only a fraction of what I found. If I could’ve gotten away with it, this book would’ve been 1,000 pages and featured no fewer than 200 pictures. But to justify that kind of heft, you definitely need, say, an Abraham Lincoln or a Hillary Clinton.
AS: What do you see as unique roles and responsibilities of a first biographer, and how those may be different from the roles and responsibilities of, say, the next person to tackle Lincoln again.
DA: I have never been tempted to write a biography of a familiar figure, although I have been urged to pick a president—certainly that is a more lucrative bet. I’m not sure why, now that you ask. I suppose it is because the part I love is the research, the thrill of the hunt, the adrenalin of following hunches and finding hidden clues. Writing is the price I have to pay for spending my days nosing around the archives and devouring old newspapers.
I suppose first biographers need to be extra scrupulous since they are establishing the factual foundation, and so often later writers or readers won’t bother to go to the original sources but instead take your word for granted. Conversely, first biographers are also much more tempted to include every little nugget they’ve found, every nifty discovery, and justify the bloat with the belief that no one may pass this way again, so they better get it into the historical record while they have a chance. Which is great for later biographers, but not so fun for the reader.
AS: I’m writing the first adult biography of Madeleine L’Engle (there have been several middle grades and YA bios). My greatest challenge has also been my greatest pleasure: combing through some 100 boxes of her papers, unprocessed and languishing in a Manhattan Mini Storage Unit on the Upper West Side. (I’ve never had greater appreciation for processed archives with finding aids!) As your subject’s first biographer, what has been your greatest challenge and your greatest pleasure?
DA: This is an easy question. The greatest challenge? Polly Adler’s life is brimming with lies and liars. Corrupt politicians, avaricious businessmen, cheating husbands, confidence artists, and criminals of every stripe, not to mention Polly herself, as her entire career was built on keeping secrets and breaking the law. I should note that I spent a lot of time with liars in my first book about the Calvinists, so lying may be an occupational hazard for biographers even in the best of circumstances.
The greatest pleasure was discovering a suitcase filled with the writing notebooks and correspondence of Polly’s ghostwriter, Virginia Faulkner, which she used when working on A House is Not a Home. The papers included many of the real names, dates, and events that had been whitewashed or omitted in her book, even a list of all the top gangsters she knew well but couldn’t name. It felt like stumbling onto the key to a puzzle in a fairy tale—that’s how extraordinary it was.
My greatest disappointment was finding out that Polly had saved trunks full of keepsakes, scrapbooks, tape-recorded reminiscences, correspondence, and inscribed books from her author friends—but her last surviving brother was so ashamed of his sister the madam that he threw most of it away after she died. Some of that material may yet turn up, but it still turns my stomach to think of all that was lost.
AS: Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, wrote her subject’s 8th major biography. She and I often discuss the pros and cons of being a subject’s first, and I asked her to pitch in to this conversation: “In my biography of Plath,” Heather says, “I felt I had to respond, either directly and indirectly, to 50 years’ worth of biographical writing about Plath, which was exhausting in its own way. (Janet Malcolm wrote an entire book on the perils of Plath biography!) I was also constantly justifying my book to skeptics, why we needed yet another biography of Plath. It was, and still is, tiring to defend my work over and over again (how many books do we have about Hemingway!), and I’m sure I internalized some of that skepticism. So I can see the advantages, now, of writing that first biography, and the freedom of interpretation it allows. Fact-gathering is more time consuming, of course, but you have that unencumbered mental space to create the narrative rather than react to a narrative that already exists. That must be thrilling.”
Your response?
DA:I am 100 percent in agreement. It is thrilling! I’ve not had to deal with what Heather describes but just imagining all those voices, all those authorities and opinions, dominating the conversation from the get-go gives me the heebie-jeebies. The upside of working among the obscure is that no one but other similarly obsessed pedants are going to argue with you. Even if they disagree, it’s usually a surprise and a pleasure to find someone else knows what you’re talking about.
AS: If you could write a first biography of anyone—if you could have that clean slate—whom would you choose, and why? I ask this with full recognition of the fact that you have a book in production, so perhaps you want to throw your computer through the window rather than contemplate a next subject.
DA: You are right about that. However, I have been fantasizing about taking some of the wonderful characters from Polly Adler’s story that didn’t get enough time on stage, and writing a book of interlocking biographical profiles. Midtown Manhattan in the Jazz Age—the nexus of Broadway, Tin Pan Alley and Madison Square Garden—was as much a classic cultural “scene” as, say, Paris of the Lost Generation or Greenwich Village in the beatnik era or Sunset Strip in the early decades of rock and roll. I would love to bring that scene back to life and reestablish its importance and influence on 20th-century American culture. As I say, I hate the idea of leaving all my delicious research on the cutting room floor.
AS: Going forward, would you be more or less inclined to take on another subject’s first biography? Will the experience of writing a subject’s first biography shape your choice of future subjects?
DA: You know, I have spent most of my adult life crafting just two, intricate baubles designed to amuse as much as anything else. At the rate I’m turning them out, I can’t fit that many more book projects into my lifespan. Lately, it has been occurring to me that perhaps I ought to have made more of a contribution to the land of the living rather than whiling away so many of my days in the company of the dead. Of course, at this point I may have unfitted myself for other occupations. Your question is making me think that if I do give in to habit and start another book maybe I should transcend my heebie-jeebies and choose something well-known, well-documented, and well-loved, and make it a slick think-piece rather than a deep dive into America’s attic. Whatever comes next, at least it should be a lot shorter.
BIO Zoom Workshop: Biography of Science, Medicine, and Innovation
What particular challenges and opportunities lie in writing about the lives of pioneers in the fields of science, medicine, and technology? Three distinguished panelists share their experiences, ranging from making technical information accessible to general and young adult audiences, to debunking “racial champion” myths and revealing “warts-and-all” about legendary subjects. Watch a video of the workshop here.
Panelists:
Rayvon Fouché is Professor of American Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University. His work explores the multiple intersections between cultural representation, racial identification, and technological design. He is the author of Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, & Shelby Davidson (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), and authored or edited Appropriating Technology: Vernacular Science and Social Power (University of Minnesota Press, 2004), Technology Studies (Sage Publications, 2008), the 4th Edition of the Handbook of Science & Technology Studies (MIT Press, 2016), and Game Changer: The Technoscientific Revolution in Sports (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). https://www.rayvonfouche.com
Charlotte D. Jacobs, MD, is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and a proud member of BIO. Her first biography, Henry Kaplan and the Story of Hodgkin’s Disease (Stanford University Press, 2010), tells the story of a controversial physician-scientist whose passionate drive to cure cancer changed the course of cancer therapy. Jacobs’ second biography, Jonas Salk: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2015), chronicles the life of one of America’s most beloved scientific heroes. Salk’s polio vaccine all but eradicated a crippling disease, and the scientific community never forgave him. It was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book prize for Biography. http://www.charlottejacobs.net
Catherine Reef has written more than forty books for young readers and adults, many of them biographies. For Sigmund Freud: Pioneer of the Mind (Clarion, 2001) she received the Sydney Taylor Award and a National Jewish Book Award Honor. Florence Nightingale: The Courageous Life of the Legendary Nurse (Clarion, 2016) was named an Outstanding Science Trade Book by the National Science Teachers Association. Catherine is also the recipient of the 2020-2021 Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award, which honors her body of work. She lives and writes in College Park, Maryland. http://catherinereef.com
Moderator:
Marlene Trestman is the author of Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin, and is now writing Most Fortunate Unfortunates: New Orleans’s Jewish Orphans’ Home, 1855-1946 for LSU Press. For her writing, Trestman has received funding from NEH, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Supreme Court Historical Society, American Jewish Archives, and Texas Jewish Historical Society. www.marlenetrestman.com
David Levering Lewis Wins 2021 BIO Award
Among his honors, David Levering Lewis received the 2009 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama at the White House on February 25, 2010.
David Levering Lewis is the winner of the 12th BIO Award. This prize is bestowed annually to a distinguished colleague who has made major contributions to the advancement of the art and craft of biography.
Lewis, 85, an American historian, is the Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History at New York University. He is the first author to have won two Pulitzer Prizes for Biography for his successive volumes on W. E. B. Du Bois: W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography Of A Race, 1868–1919 and W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and The American Century, 1919–1963.
Lewis also won the Bancroft Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his two-volume biography of Du Bois, 15 years in the research and writing, and hailed by critics as “definitive” and “magisterial.” Kirkus wrote: “Du Bois has finally found a Boswell worthy of his achievements as an African-American reformer who fought for human rights in the US and the wider world.”
A spectacular scholar who has written eight books and edited two, Lewis was educated at Fisk and Columbia Universities, and received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has taught at Morgan State University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of the District of Columbia. He was professor of history at the University of California at San Diego from 1980–1984 and, in 1985, he joined Rutgers University as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History. He served as “distinguished visiting professor” in the history department of Harvard in 2001 and, in 2003, he was appointed to his current position at NYU.
Throughout his career Lewis has received prestigious fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Humanities Center, the American Philosophical Society, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He has served as a trustee of the National Humanities Center; the commissioner of the National Portrait Gallery; a former senator of Phi Beta Kappa; and former president of the Society of American Historians. He currently serves on the board of the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine.
“The BIO Award is the highest honor that our organization bestows, and David Levering Lewis is an obvious choice,” said Linda Leavell, president of BIO. “His spectacular lifetime of work—his biography of Martin Luther King Jr., his two volumes of W. E. B. Du Bois, and his most recent biography of Wendell Willkie—inspires all of us and adds immensely to the genre of biography.”
Previous BIO Award winners are Taylor Branch, Robert Caro, Ron Chernow, Richard Holmes, Hermione Lee, Candice Millard, James McGrath Morris, Arnold Rampersad, Stacy Schiff, Jean Strouse, and Claire Tomalin.
Kitty Kelley, who has written seven biographies, serves on the BIO Board of Directors.
BIO Workshop on Biography of Creation
Biography of Creation: Writing about Artists, Musicians and Culture
Three biographers with a tantalizing variety of books discuss the special challenges associated with writing about artists and other creative talents. Watch a video of the event here.
They address topics of use to any veteran or aspiring biographer, but also focus on writing with authority on the arts and cultural history. Who are you writing for and how technical should your language be? How important is historical context and how best to incorporate it?
The Panel
Jonathan Gould is a writer and a former professional musician who spent many years working in bands and recording studios. He is the author of Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America (Crown, 2008), and Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life (Crown Archetype, 2017). He is currently at work on a biography of the rock group Talking Heads (HarperCollins, 2023). The book focuses on the band’s remarkable musical evolution and their role as the figureheads, in popular music, of the unlikely emergence of Lower Manhattan as the cultural epicenter of New York City during the last quarter of the 20th Century.
Marcus J. Moore is an award-winning music journalist, editor, curator, pundit, and author of The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, 2020). He is a contributing writer with The Nation and a contributing editor with Bandcamp Daily. His coverage of soul, jazz, hip-hop, and rock can be found at The New York Times, Pitchfork, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, NPR, Rolling Stone, and The Atlantic, among many other outlets. He was originally from the Washington, DC, area, and now lives in Brooklyn. On the web: marcusjmoore.media.
Celia Stahr, PhD, a native of California, is the author of Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist (St. Martin’s Press, 2020). Her love for art and culture stemmed from extensive travels to Cuba, Mexico, East and Southern Africa, Western Europe, China, and every region of the United States. She has a background in modern and contemporary art history (with a particular focus on issues of race and gender) as well as in African art and the diaspora. She is an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco. On the web: fridakahlojourney.com; Instagram: @frida.in.america.
Moderator
Steve Paul, a member of the BIO board, is the author of Hemingway at Eighteen: The Pivotal Year that Launched an American Legend (Chicago Review Press, 2017) and a biography of the writer Evan S. Connell, forthcoming from the University of Missouri Press. In his long newspaper career he served, among other roles, as book critic, arts editor and ultimately editorial page editor and columnist before retiring in 2016. He’s a contributing columnist at KC Studio, a regional arts magazine.
BIO Virtual Workshop: BIO’s Coaches Answer First-Time Biographers’ Questions about Proposal Writing and Promotion
Three accomplished biographers who have worked with other writers to help bring their biographies to life answered questions about proposal writing and promotion. You see the video here.
Moderator: Marlene Trestman is the author of Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin, and is now writing Most Fortunate Unfortunates: New Orleans’s Jewish Orphans’ Home, 1855-1946 for LSU Press. The former Special Assistant to Maryland’s Attorney General, Trestman enforced consumer and public health laws, twice earning Exceptional Service awards. For her writing, Trestman has received funding from NEH, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Supreme Court Historical Society, American Jewish Archives, and Texas Jewish Historical Society.
Panel: Gretchen H. Gerzina is the Paul Murray Kendall Professor of Biography at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Previously she was the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor in Biography at Dartmouth College. She has published nine books, four of them biographies of people who crossed lines of geography, culture, and/or race. She has held grants or fellowships from NEH, Fulbright, and Oxford University, and has twice served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in biography, once as chair. She is currently working on two new books.
Carla Kaplan, Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Northeastern University and Founding Director of its Humanities Center, has received fellowships from the NEH, Guggenheim Foundation, Schomburg Center, and elsewhere, and has published seven books, including Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance and Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters (Doubleday, 2002), both New York Times Notable Books. Her current project, forthcoming from HarperCollins, is a biography of Jessica Mitford.
Anne Boyd Rioux is a member of BIO’s Board of Directors. Her books include the biography Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist (Norton, 2016). She is a two-time recipient of the NEH Public Scholar Award, currently working on a biographical narrative of the American writer Kay Boyle.
BIO Honors Gayatri Patnaik
On November 9, BIO hosted a virtual event honoring Gayatri Patnaik, winner of the 2020 Editorial Excellence Award. Taking part were three of her authors: Imani Perry, Marcus Rediker, and Jeanne Theoharis, along with literary agent Tanya McKinnon. You can see a video of the event here.
Patnaik is Associate Director and Editorial Director of Beacon Press, where for 18 years she has edited and published many books on race, ethnicity, and immigration. A native of India who emigrated with her family to the United States as a child, she has focused on African American history, creating Beacon’s “ReVisioning American History” series and its “Queer Action / Queer Ideas” series.
Kai Bird, chair of BIO’s Award Committee, with Tim Duggan, Peniel Joseph, Kitty Kelley, and Megan Marshall, praised Patnaik for her work as “a very gutsy, courageous editor who has taken on some high-risk, controversial biographies and published so many outstanding authors.”
Imani Perry, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, is the author of Looking for Lorraine: The Radical Life of Lorraine Hansbury, winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, and other awards.
Marcus Rediker, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, is the award-winning author of numerous books including The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf who became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.
Jeanne Theoharis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, is the author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, winner of the NAACP Image Award and the Letitia Woods Brown Award of the Association of Black Women Historians.
Tanya McKinnon, founder and principal of McKinnon Literary, represents New York Times bestselling and award-winning nonfiction that amplifies progressive voices, as well as fiction, children’s books, and graphic novels.
BIO’s Editorial Excellence Award is presented annually to an outstanding editor from nominations submitted by BIO members. Past recipients are Tim Duggan, Robert Gottlieb, Jonathan Segal, Ileene Smith, Nan A. Talese, and Robert Weil.
Gayatri Patnaik to Receive Editorial Excellence Award
At Beacon Press, Gayatri Patnaik co-edited The King Legacy series, a partnership between Beacon and Martin Luther King Jr.’s estate.
Gayatri Patnaik will receive BIO’s 2020 Editorial Excellence Award on Monday evening, November 9, at an online event featuring three of her authors: Imani Perry, Marcus Rediker, and Jeanne Theoharis, along with literary agent Tanya McKinnon.
Patnaik is Associate Director and Editorial Director of Beacon Press, where for 18 years she has edited and published many books on race, ethnicity, and immigration. A native of India who emigrated with her family to the United States as a child, she has focused on African American history, creating Beacon’s “ReVisioning American History” series and its “Queer Action / Queer Ideas” series.
Kai Bird, chair of BIO’s Award Committee, with Tim Duggan, Peniel Joseph, Kitty Kelley, and Megan Marshall, praised Patnaik for her work as “a very gutsy, courageous editor who has taken on some high-risk, controversial biographies and published so many outstanding authors.”
Imani Perry, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, is the author of Looking for Lorraine: The Radical Life of Lorraine Hansbury, winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, and other awards.
Marcus Rediker, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, is the award-winning author of numerous books including The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf who became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.
Jeanne Theoharis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, is the author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, winner of the NAACP Image Award and the Letitia Woods Brown Award of the Association of Black Women Historians.
Tanya McKinnon, founder and principal of McKinnon Literary, represents New York Times bestselling and award-winning nonfiction that amplifies progressive voices, as well as fiction, children’s books, and graphic novels.
BIO’s Editorial Excellence Award is presented annually to an outstanding editor from nominations submitted by BIO members. Past recipients are Tim Duggan, Robert Gottlieb, Jonathan Segal, Ileene Smith, Nan A. Talese, and Robert Weil.
Register for free tickets on Eventbrite and receive a link to join the event on Zoom on Monday, November 9, at 7 p.m. ET.