A Life in Biography

Emily. Van Duyne discusses her new, ground breaking book, Loving Sylvia Plath 14.07.2024 51:18 ↓

You think you know the Plath story? Ah, but who gets to tell it, and why do they do so, and how does someone like Ted Hughes commandeer the narrative?

Ghostwriter, biographer, novelist, Shakespeare, Faulkner—we cover it all in Lawrence Wells’s work 07.07.2024 34:23 ↓

What happens when a writer is hired to do a biographical novel seeking to prove Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, and how years later, the project becomes two books of nonfiction and fiction

Marcia Biederman on her fascinating book about abortion in 19th C. New England 30.06.2024 35:21 ↓

Marcia Biderman writes biography like a mystery story. There is much to learn from her.

A few more words about branding. 12.06.2024 11:43 ↓

This won’t take long.

Building Your Brand and Best Practices 09.06.2024 35:09 ↓

Advice you may not want to take.

Robert Hamblin discusses his new book, a kind of biography of William Faulkner in verse 19.05.2024 40:00 ↓

An important Faulkner critic and biographer introduces us to new way of understanding Faulkner, his fiction, and his life

I have reloaded the episode with Roger Lewis talking about his Taylor-Burton biography. 13.05.2024 38:21 ↓

A loading issue made me repost this exciting talk with Roger Lewis.

A talk with Jared Stearns about his new biography of Marilyn Chambers and the world of hardcore 05.05.2024 47:55 ↓

How does a biographer deal with the world of pornography and so-called porn stars. Jared Stearns knows how in his biography, Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers.

The Existential Loneliness of the Long Distance Biographer 22.04.2024 1:09:42 ↓

This podcast is not as pretentious or self-pitying as you might suppose.

Malcolm W. Browne reporting from Vietnam and other biographical matters with Ray Boomhower 14.04.2024 41:22 ↓

Ray Boomhower talks about what it is like to be a journalist in Vietnam and about what it is like writing biographies of journalists.

Biography in the Prison House of Modernism, Part 2 07.04.2024 41:08 ↓

I had fun with this one. I really let it rip, if I do say so myself.

A new Greta Garbo biography by Lois Banner, with new sources and insights 23.03.2024 42:43 ↓

Lois Banner, biographer of Marilyn Monroe, turns to Garbo, learns Swedish, and discovers all sorts of important sources not to be found in previous biographies.

Mary Dearborn discusses her new biography of Carson McCullers 17.03.2024 52:07 ↓

Mary Dearborn does a valiant job of dealing with my interruptions in our discussion of her splendid biography of Carson McCullers.

Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” and the Prison House Modernism 10.03.2024 17:18 ↓

You might want to read Plath’s poem “Mirror” as I explain my reactions to it as a biographer.

Authors vanish after they die and are revived. A talk with the biographer of Carolyn Wells. 03.03.2024 17:18 ↓

How Rebecca Rego Barry discovered Carolyn Wells, and why she wrote a biography of a forgotten literary figure, and how she did it.

A rollicking interview with Paul Alexander about his new biography of Billie Holiday. 25.02.2024 34:25 ↓

Paul Alexander talks about his new state of the art biography of Billie Holiday. I listened and I learned.

My listeners respond 18.02.2024 30:28 ↓

My listeners respond and I comment on their comments

Why Biography Doesn’t Belong 11.02.2024 16:28 ↓

A rambling meditation on the biographer as exile.

A talk with Marian Janssen, biographer of Carolyn Kizer, one of the wild women of American poetry 04.02.2024 30:58 ↓

A talk with the delightful Marian Janssen who describes her career as a biographer and why she chose to write about the American poet Carolyn Kizer.

How close is too close when it comes to the biography of your subject? 28.01.2024 33:41 ↓

I explain what happened when I became part of the lives of my two subjects while researching and writing To Be a Woman: The Life of Jill Craigie and A Private Life of Michael Foot

You’ve heard of Chaplin and Keaton, but Al Christie?—the subject of Mark Kearney’s new biography 21.01.2024 36:37 ↓

Al Christie: Hollywood’s Forgotten Film Pioneer by Mark Kearney. A wide ranging discussion of a pioneer Hollywood filmmaker, how to write his biography, and what implications there are for biographers of film figures.

Tim Christian discusses his audiobook version of Hemingway’s Widow 15.01.2024 29:45 ↓

How to do a biography as an audiobook

The author records his book: Tim Christian on Hemingway’s Widow 14.01.2024 29:49 ↓

Tim Christian describes the process of doing an audiobook, with some very specific advice and technical specifications.

Biographer Ruth Laney discusses her decades of work on the life and world of Ernest J. Gaines 07.01.2024 50:48 ↓

Cherie Quarters: The Place and People That Inspire Ernest J. Gaines: biography, memoir, history, and an evocation of the material world out of which a great American writer fashioned his fiction.

Whose biography is it, anyway? My answer to Joyce Carol Oates 24.12.2023 9:48 ↓

A brief podcast, what you might call a short snort, about those who malign biography.