Biographers International Organization

These authors talk about a few of the different forms of biography. Caitlin Cass’s graphic book, Suffrage Song: The Haunted History of Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the U.S., was named a Best Art Book of 2024 by Hyperallergic. Since 2009, Cass has self-published a bi-monthly comic periodical called the Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent, and her comics and cartoons have...

Photo: Julie Denesha As the president of the Biographers International Organization, Steve Paul talks about the organization’s exciting new initiatives in 2025 and beyond. Paul spent more than 40 years in daily journalism and now, as an independent scholar, he is devoted to literary biography. His most recent book, Literary Alchemist: The Writing Life of Evan S. Connell (University of Missouri Pre...

Photo: Kevin Scanlon This celebrated documentary filmmaker is the recipient of the 2025 BIO Award – Biographers International Organization’s annual recognition of a distinguished colleague who has made significant contributions to the art and craft of biography. Dawn Porter’s documentaries include rich biographical explorations of John Lewis, Lady Bird Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy and Luther Vandros...

These celebrated authors talk about BIO’s Plutarch Award for Biography – the organization’s annual recognition of the year’s best biography, as determined by a committee of five distinguished biographers from nominations by BIO members and publishers. First time biographer and British Ghanaian journalist Yepoka Yeebo took home BIO’s 2024 Plutarch Award for her book, Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Loot...

These guests talk about the awards that BIO offers for biographers. Heather Clarks is an author, literary critic and chair of BIO’s awards committee. Her most recent book, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, was one of the New York Times Ten Best Books (2021), and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize....

These pivotal BIO members share their experience as co-chairs of BIO’s June 5-6, 2025 annual conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Linda Leavell served as BIO’s president from 2019 to 2023, and her biography of American poet Marianne Moore, Holding On Upside Down, won BIO’s Plutarch Award for the best biography of the year, the PEN award for biography, and the Modernist Studies...

In this special episode, BIO’s former president and one of the organization’s founders, talks about the history of BIO and its influence. In 2019 McGrath Morris received the BIO Award, annually presented to a writer who has made a major contribution to the advancement of the art and craft of biography. His award-winning books have included Tony Hillerman: A Life; The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway,...

This award-winning author of biographers for young readers talks about his writing career and his long-term service as a founding BIO board member. His most recent book, A Long Time Coming: A Lyrical Biography of Race in America From Ona Judge to Barack Obama, was published by Calkins Creek in August 2023. Shepard initiated and organized BIO’s exciting forthcoming regional conference,  Telling the...

This first-time biographer’s, Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers , explores the untold story of the world’s most famous X-rated star. Chambers rose to fame as the face of Ivory Snow laundry detergent and the star of the X-rated film, Behind the Green Door . Stearns’s book was published by Headpress in May 2024. As a former journalist, Jared Stearns currently serves as the editor of B...

This scholar and author’s latest book, Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in August 2024. As a queer Black feminist love evangelist, Gumbs has written four earlier books, including Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, which won the 2022 Whiting Award in Non-Fiction. Gumbs is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Priz...

This historian and author’s Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins, was published in January 2025 by New York University Press. It examines the life and legacy of one of the longest-serving women members of the Black Panther Party. Huggins also is an educator, poet, mother, and a former political prisoner. As a first-time biographer, Mary Phillips serves as a...

This award-winning archaeologist, author and scholar talks about her latest book, Apostle of Liberation: AME Bishop Paul Quinn and the Underground Railroad. Published by Rowman and Littlefield this month, this biography explores the life of a larger-than-life leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church – a man who actively supported the education of enslaved Black Americans and their freedom...

This award-winning musicologist, internationally recognized concert pianist, and London-based popular public speaker talks about her first book, South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene, published by the University of Illinois Press in November 2024. Ege is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, and she is a leading scholar of Afr...

Author, professor and retired New York Supreme Court judge, Diane Kiesel , talks about her latest book, When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law. It is set to be published in February 2025 by the University of Michigan Press. While serving as a judge, Kiesel continued her career as a writer of non-fiction that began years before when she was a journ...

This author’s biography, The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic, was published by Simon & Schuster in December 2024. Clifford is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, and he served as the executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council and as a board director at Next Digi...

This historian, best-selling author and foreign-policy analyst talks about his latest book, Reagan: His Life and Legend. Published by Liveright in September 2024, this biography was recognized as one of the Ten Best Books of this year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post and the Economist. Boot’s previous biography, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy...

This journalist’s co-authored and Pulitzer Prize winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, served as the inspiration for the Oscar winning film, Oppenheimer. Bird has written several critically acclaimed biographies, including The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms; The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the Am...

Historian and author Pamela D. Toler’s latest book, The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany, was published in August 2024 by Beacon Press. In addition to this biography of Sigrid Schultz, the fearless woman who headed the Chicago Tribune’s Berlin bureau from 1925 to 1941, Toler has authored ten books of popular history for children and adults, includ...

This veteran author and Rutgers University journalism professor speaks with BIO member Kevin McGruder about his latest book, John Lewis: A Life. It was published by Simon and Schuster in October 2024 and supported by grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography. Greenberg’...

Veteran biographer and emeritus Baruch College journalism professor Carl Rollyson talks about his latest book, Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volume 2, published by the University Press of Mississippi in August 2024. Rollyson’s impressive literary output—of more than 40 books—includes examinations of William Faulkner, Amy Lowell, Walter Brennan, Lillian Hellman, Norman Mailer and Marilyn Monroe. He also...

Award-winning historian, curator and biographer, Heath Hardage Lee, talks about her  latest book, The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady.  It was published by St. Martin’s Press in August 2024. Lee’s work has been featured on the Today Show, C-Span, and on the Smithsonian Channel’s America’s Hidden Stories. She also writes about history and politics f...

Celebrated documentary filmmaker and Television Hall of Fame inductee Ken Burns, talks about his latest film, Leonardo da Vinci. It will air nationwide on PBS network stations on November 18 and 19, 2024. Burns has directed and produced such acclaimed historical documentaries as, The Civil War; Baseball; Jazz; The War; The National Parks:  America’s Best Idea; Prohibition, The Vietnam War; Country...

Author Susan Blumberg-Kason talks about her latest book, Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China, published by Post Hill Press in November 2023. Blumberg-Kason has also authored Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong and she co-edited the book Hong Kong Noir. Blumberg-Kason is a regular contributor to the Asian Review of Books and World Literature Today, ...

This week we interview Benjamin Taylor, author of Chasing Bright Medusas: The Life of Willa Cather. This biography of Cather, a celebrated American novelist, was published in November 2023 by Viking. In 2021, Taylor received an award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. One of his previous memoirs, The Hue and Cry at Our House, received the 2018 Los Angeles Times/Christopher Isherwood Priz...

This week we interview Patti Hartigan, award-winning journalist and author of August Wilson: A Life. This biography, Hartigan’s first, about the legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who powerfully and poetically chronicled African American life in the 20th century, was published in August 2023 by Simon & Schuster. Hartigan has had a long career at the Boston Globe where she served as a...