Biographers International Organization

Happy New Year! We’re pleased to start this year with a special episode featuring Pulitzer Prize Award-winning biographer Megan Marshall. During BIO’s virtual conference last year, Marshall received our organization’s highest honor: the BIO Award. Each year this award recognizes outstanding authors for their contributions to the art and craft of biography. Megan Marshall accepted the award with a...

This week we interview Gene Andrew Jarrett, Dean of the Faculty and William S. Tod Professor of English at Princeton University. His latest book, Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird , published in October 2022 by Princeton University Press, examines the Gilded Age writer known as the poet laureate of his race. Jarrett also authored Representing the Race: A New Political Histor...

This week we interview Iris Jamahl Dunkle, the former Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, California, and an award-winning author. Dunkle’s biography about the artist and wife of famed writer Jack London, titled, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer , was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in September 2020. Iris Jamahl Dunkle has authored four poetry collections...

This week we interview Anastasia Curwood, Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and author of  Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics , scheduled for publication by the University of North Carolina Press in January 2023. Curwood has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the James Weldon Johnson Institute for th...

This week we interview Winston James, author of Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik , published by Columbia University Press in July 2022. A Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, James also authored, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America , winner of the Gordon K. Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship...

This week we interview Mark Clague, author of O Say Can You Hear: A Cultural Biography of The Star-Spangled Banner, published by W.W. Norton & Company in June 2022. Clague serves as Professor of Musicology, Arts Leadership, and American Culture at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, where he also serves as an associate dean. His other anthem-related publications in...

This week we interview Allison Gilbert, an award-winning journalist and co-author (with writer Julia Scheeres) of Listen, World!: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman. Published by Seal Press in September 2022, this biography of William Randolph Hearst’s highest-paid woman writer has been called “broadminded, sharp-witted, fast-paced, and funny” by Pulitzer Prize-winnin...

This week we interview Soyica Diggs Colbert, the Idol Family Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts at Georgetown University. Her book, Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry , published by Yale University Press in April 2021, was described in the New York Times as a captivating portrait of writer Lorraine Hansberry’s life, art, and political activism. Diggs Colbert’s...

This week we interview E. Stanly Godbold, author of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: Power and Human Rights, 1975–2020 . This dual biography of President Carter and his wife Rosalynn was published by Oxford University Press in September 2022. The first volume of Godbold’s extensive examination of the Carters, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: The Georgia Years, 1924–1974 , was also published by Oxford Universi...

This week we interview Bernice Lerner, a senior scholar at Boston University’s Center for Character and Social Responsibility. Her latest book is a dual biography of a high-ranking British military doctor during World War II, and Lerner’s mother, Rachel Genuth, a poor Jewish teenager from the Hungarian provinces and Holocaust survivor. The book, All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doc...

This week we interview Li Shan Chan, a Singaporean writer, mental health advocate, and doctoral student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who was awarded the Biography Prize by Honolulu’s Center for Biographical Research. Her latest book, Searching for Lee Wen: A Life in 135 Parts , about a unique Singaporean Chinese artist, was published by Epigram Books in May 2022. Her previous books includ...

This week we interview Marko Perko, a veteran writer and the co-author (with psychiatrist Stephen M. Stahl) of Tesla: His Tremendous and Troubled Life . This biography of Nikola Tesla—the Serbian American engineer who helped to create our modern world with his wide-ranging inventions, discoveries, and patents, including alternating current (AC)—was published by Prometheus Books in May 2022. Perko...

This week we interview Etta Madden, author of Engaging Italy: American Women’s Utopian Visions and International Networks . Published by the State University of New York Press in April 2022, this book focuses on three little known Americans—Caroline Crane Marsh, Anne Hampton Brewster, and Emily Bliss Gould—whose lives intersected in an evolving Italy during the mid-19th century. Madden is the auth...

This week we interview Justin Tinsley, a senior sports and culture reporter for ESPN’s “The Undefeated.” He has written commentaries and feature stories about people as varied as Marvin Gaye, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Serena Williams, Cardi B, and Kendrick Lamar. Tinsley is also a regular presence on ESPN’s daily sports talk show, “Around the Horn.” And, he is the host of the “30 for 30” podcast,...

This week we interview Betsy Smoot, an intelligence historian interested in early twentieth-century cryptology and communications. She retired from the Center for Cryptologic History of the National Security Agency in 2017, and she has published articles in Cryptologia and Intelligence and National Security.  Her book, Parker Hitt: The Father of American Military Crytology, was published by the Un...

This week we interview Gwendolyn Mink and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, co-authors of Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress, published by New York University Press in May 2022. This book explores the life and accomplishments of Patsy Mink, the first Asian American woman elected to U.S. House of Representatives, and a dedicated advocate for Title IX legislation and oppositi...

This week we interview Toluse Olorunnipa and Robert Samuels, Peabody Award and Polk Award-winning journalists and co-authors of His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, published by Viking Press in May 2022. Toluse Olorunnipa is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the Post in 2019 and previously covered the Whit...

This week we interview Philip Short, a British journalist who has written several definitive biographies, including Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare. Short has had a long career as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington, D.C., working for the BBC, the Economist, and the Times of London. Short’s latest biography is, Putin, published by Henry Holt & Company in...

This week we interview award winning writer Mark Lee Gardner. His latest biography, The Earth is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation, was published by Mariner Books in June 2022.Gardner’s previous books, Rough Riders, To Hell on a Fast Horse and Shot All to Hell, received multiple honors, including a Spur Award from Western Writers of America. An...

This week we interview Paulina L. Alberto, an Argentine-born historian of Afro-Latin America and Professor of History, Spanish, and Portuguese at the University of Michigan. Her biography, Black Legend: The Many Lives of Raúl Grigera and the Power of Racial Storytelling in Modern Argentina, was published by Cambridge University Press in January 2022. As the author of Terms of Inclusion: Black Inte...

This week we interview award-winning author and Brigham Young University music professor Brian Harker. His latest biography, Sportin’ Life: John W. Bubbles an American Classic, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2022. John Bubbles was one of the jazz world’s most singular and elusive architects. Harker also explored jazz music in his previous books, Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and...

This week we interview Kathleen Stone, a Boston-based lawyer whose reviews, essays and have appeared in MS Magazine, Arts Fuse, Ploughshares, Pangyrus, The Timberline Review, Los Angeles Review of Books and Grist. She also co-hosts Booklab, a literary salon in Boston. Stone’s biography, her first, explores the lives of seven remarkable women from a wide range of backgrounds. They Called Us Girls:...

This week we offer the second part of two special episodes featuring David Maraniss, the veteran journalist and author of 13 highly regarded books. His latest book, Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, will be published by Simon and Schuster in August 2022. Maraniss is a New York Times bestselling author, associate editor at The Washington Post and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. In addi...

This week we offer the first of two special episodes featuring David Maraniss, the veteran journalist and author of 13 highly regarded books. His latest book, Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, will be published by Simon & Schuster in August 2022. Maraniss is a New York Times bestselling author and associate editor at The Washington Post. In 1992 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his rep...

This week we interview Tomiko Brown-Nagin, author of Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality , published by Pantheon in January 2022. Brown-Nagin serves as Dean of Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, and Professor of History at Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts...