Biographers International Organization

This week we interview sports journalist and author Jeff Pearlman. His latest book, The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, was published in October 2022 by Mariner Books. Pearlman has also written eight New York Times best-selling books, including Football for a Buck, The Bad Guys Won!, Boys Will Be Boys, Showtime, Sweetness, and Gunslinger. He is the host of the Two Writers Slinging...

This week we interview E. James West, a historian and lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies and Cultures at England’s University College of London. He also serves as co-director of the Black Press Research Collective based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. West has authored three books, most recently Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr., published in July 2022...

This week we present the second half of our special two-part interview with Candice Millard, author of four New York Times bestsellers. Her most recent book, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, was published by Doubleday in May of 2022. Her previous books include The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, and Destiny of th...

This week we present the first segment of a special two-part interview with Candice Millard, author of four New York Times bestsellers. Her most recent book, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, was published by in May 2022 by Doubleday. Her previous books include The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, and Destiny of the Repu...

This week we interview Aidan Levy whose latest book, Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins, was published in December 2022 by Hachette Books. Levy also authored, Dirty Blvd.: The Life and Music of Lou Reed, and he edited Patti Smith on Patti Smith: Interviews and Encounters. A former Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellow, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Villag...

This week we interview Chad Williams, the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University. His latest book,  The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War , was published in April 2023 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Williams specializes in African American and modern US History, African American military history, the W...

This week we feature the second segment of a special two-part interview featuring award-winning biographer, Stacy Schiff. Her latest book, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams , was published by Little, Brown and Company in October 2022. Schiff is the author of several best-selling and acclaimed biographies, including gripping examinations of Cleopatra, the Witches of Salem and her Pulitzer Prize winni...

This week we feature the first segment of a special two-part interview with award-winning biographer, Stacy Schiff.  Her latest book, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, was published by Little, Brown, and Company in October 2022. Schiff is the author of several best-selling biographies, including compelling examinations of Cleopatra, the Witches of Salem and her Pulitzer Prize winning study of Vera...

This week we interview Ashley Brown, assistant history professor and the Allan H. Selig Chair in Sport and Society in U.S. History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her biography, Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson, was published in February 2023 by Oxford University Press. Gibson was the first African American to compete and win championship titles at Wimbledon, as well at...

This week we interview RJ Smith, author of Chuck Berry: An American Life, published in November 2022 by Hachette Books. Smith is a senior editor at Los Angeles Magazine, a contributor to Details, a columnist for The Village Voice and a staff writer for Spin. He also has written for GQ, New York Times Magazine, Elle, and Men’s Vogue. His book The One: The Life and Music of James Brown was amo...

This special episode features excerpts from a conversation between award-winning journalist and author Andrew Meier and fellow biographer and BIO member Kai Bird. Meier’s latest book, Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty, was published in October 2022 by Random House, and it’s a comprehensive examination of one of New York’s most influential families. This live, in-per...

This week we interview Helen Rappaport, the British author of sixteen highly regarded biographies. Her latest book,  In Search of Mary Seacole: The Making of a Black Cultural Icon and Humanitarian,  was published by Pegasus Books in September 2022. Rappaport has been a full-time historian and writer for more than twenty-three years, and in 2003 she discovered and purchased an 1869 portrait of Mary...

This week we interview Andrew Nagorski, an award-winning journalist and author of Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom, published by Simon and Schuster in August 2022. Nagorski spent more than three decades as a foreign correspondent and editor for Newsweek, and he is the author of eight books, including Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power and The Nazi Hunt...

This week we interview Lydia Moland, professor of philosophy at Colby College and author of Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life, published by in the University of Chicago Press in October 2022. This biography explores the life of one of the nineteenth century’s most courageous abolitionists. Moland’s work on Lydia Maria Child has appeared in the Paris Review, the Boston Globe, the Was...

This week we interview Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos, a historian, journalist, and author of The Pirate’ s Wife: The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd . It was published by Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HarperCollins, in November 2022. She is also the author of The Pirate Next Door: The Untold Story of Eighteenth-Century Pirates’ Wives, Families and Communities , published by Carolina Academ...

This week we interview Hilary A. Hallett, the Mendelson Family Professor, Director of American Studies, and Associate Professor of History at Columbia University. Her latest book is Inventing The Hollywood It Girl: How Elinor Glyn Created the Modern Romance and Conquered Early Hollywood , published by Liveright, in July 2022. Hallett is also the author of Go West, Young Women! The Rise of Early Ho...

This week we interview writer, editor, and former journalist in the Washington, D.C. area, Diana P. Parsell.  Her biography, Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington’s Cherry Trees , was published this month by Oxford University Press. It’s been praised by advance reviewers for its many revelations about a pioneering American woman who brought the world alive for readers a cen...

This week we interview Neil Baldwin, an author whose critically acclaimed biographies include examinations of William Carlos Williams, Man Ray, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. His current biography, Martha Graham: When Dance Became Modern , was published by Knopf, in October 2022. Baldwin has served as manager of The Annual Fund at The New York Public Library and was the founding executive director...

This week we interview Lerita Coleman Brown, author of What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman , published this month by Broadleaf Books. A Distinguished Professor Emerita of Psychology at Agnes Scott College, Brown is a spiritual director/companion, writer, retreat leader, and speaker. She has appeared in the documentaries Back Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story an...

This week we interview co-authors Marilyn S. Greenwald and Yun Li about their book, Eunice Hunton Carter: A Lifelong Fight for Social Justice , published by Empire State Editions, in April 2021. Greenwald is Professor Emerita of Journalism at Ohio University and a former Ohio-based newspaper reporter. She has authored five biographies including: A Woman of the Times: Journalism, Feminism and the C...

This week we interview journalist Kostya Kennedy, author of True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson , published by St. Martin’s Press, in April 2022. Kennedy is an editorial director at Dotdash Meredith and a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated . He is also the New York Times –bestselling author of 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports (a runner–up for the 2012...

This week we interview Wanda A. Hendricks, Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of South Carolina and author of The Life of Madie Hall Xuma: Black Women’s Global Activism During Jim Crow and Apartheid, published by the University of Illinois Press (UIP) in October 2022. Hendricks has served as the National Director of the Association of Black Women Historians, and senior editor of the...

This special episode features excerpts from a spirited conversation between USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page and fellow award-winning biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell. His latest book, Ted Kennedy: A Life, is a fascinating exploration of the life and times of the former icon of the Senate and Kennedy family member, and it was published by Penguin Press in October 2022. Thi...

This time we interview Susan Page, an award-winning journalist and USA Today’s Washington Bureau Chief. Page has written biographies of the influential former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former first lady Barbara Bush. Currently, Page is working on a biography of Barbara Walters—the iconic broadcast journalist who passed away in December 2022. Susan Page’s biography of Walter...

This week we feature a special episode with BIO’s 2022 Plutarch Award-winner Frances Wilson. Her latest book, Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence , published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is considered to be an electrifying and revelatory new biography of the English writer. Wilson, a London-based critic, journalist, and author of several award-winning nonfiction works, was interviewed by Ni...