Category Archives: Uncategorized

BIOpics

Posted on June 6, 2016 | 1 comment

I’m back from the 2016 BIO Conference in Richmond — and what a terrific three days it was.  As promised, I tried to take as many pictures as I could, blasting away with my iPhone, sometimes from the back of the room. We’ll have video of some of this weekend’s extraordinary moments here sometime soon — but meanwhile, here are a few highlights, taken at the panels I attended (and there were LOTS more, trust me!):

The opening plenary session featured two master biographers discussing the craft, mulling over everything from whether you need to like your particular subject as a person (answer: no) to whether a biography can be truly definitive (answer: probably not).  Oh, and did I tell you who the two biographers were? A pair of aces, with a list of awards as long as your arm: Annette Gordon-Reed, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, and T.J. Stiles, whose Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America won this year’s Pulitzer for History. And as I think the photos below convey, what a lively, wonderful, invigorating session it was.

Next, I attended a panel moderated by my pal and colleague Marc Leepson on the Future of Research.  Are you one of those researchers who wants everything in a library available digitally and on-line right now? Librarians and archivists want that, too — but stress that it’s not likely to happen as quickly as they’d like, either.

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Kathy Jordan (Library of Virginia), Paige Newman (Virginia Historical Society) and Marc Leepson.

Then it was over to one of the most lively and entertaining panel discussions of the day, as James Atlas, Blake Bailey, Stacy Schiff, and D.T. Max reflected on how they chose their subjects.  And laughed . . and laughed . . . and laughed. Wonderful.

The lunch session featured a show-stopper of a speech by the winner of the 2016 BIO Award: Claire Tomalin, biographer of Jane Austen, Samuel Pepys, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and so many more. At 82, she’s as spry as ever. Take a look:

After lunch, I was off to another spectacularly good panel discussion (moderated with aplomb by Dean King) on Writing Family Biographies — in this case presidential or royal families — featuring Nigel Hamilton, Kitty Kelley, and Andrew Lownie. The conversation quickly evolved to authorized vs. unauthorized biography, and then to the legal nuances needed to ensure you protect yourself from legal challenges (hint: take pictures and write personal letters). As you can see from the photos below, this was another panel that knew how to have a good time:

Finally, at Saturday’s closing reception, we announced the winner of the 2016 Plutarch Award, the only international literary award presented by biographers for biography. It went to Rosemary Sullivan for Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva.  After learning only a few weeks back that she was the winner of the award — even we didn’t know who the winner would be until the ballot was closed in May — Rosemary went out of her way to come in all the way from Chile to attend the conference and make a lovely acceptance speech.  Well done.

As the outgoing president (and congratulations to Will Swift for presiding over this year’s conference so spectacularly), it was really nice to attend the conference from in front of the curtain, rather than keeping tabs on the goings-and-comings that go on behind the curtain.  My thanks to the hardworking bunch at BIO who made the conference so special, and so wonderful.  And thanks, Richmond, for having us.

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Posted in Biographers International Organization, conferences, Uncategorized

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Thursday Odds and Ends

Posted on June 2, 2016 | 1 comment

I was thrilled this week to see Jim Henson get a nice shout-out in the New York Times Book Review, where it was listed in their “Paperback Row” as one of seven new paperbacks worth checking out this week. Many thanks for that — and thanks to all of you who’ve mentioned how much you’re enjoying seeing Jim in paperback.  I appreciate it.

Second thing: I’m leaving today for Richmond to attend this year’s Biographers International Organization (BIO) Conference. As the outgoing president of the organization, I had the pleasure of watching this planning and programming for this conference over the last year, and let me tell you — while it seems I say this every year, this really does look to be one of the most informative and entertaining conferences yet.

And with BIO’s new president (the terrific presidential biographer Will Swift, by the way) taking the reins of the organization as of yesterday, this’ll be the first conference I’ve attended since 2010 without being a board member, officer, moderator, or panelist.  I get to just sit and talk with people and enjoy the thing, which I’m really looking forward to. I also promise to report on things when it’s finished.  With photos, even.

See ya in Richmond!

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Posted in Biographers International Organization, conferences, Uncategorized

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Out Today: Jim Henson (Finally!) In Paperback

Posted on May 10, 2016 | Comments Off on Out Today: Jim Henson (Finally!) In Paperback

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After nearly three years in hardcover, Jim Henson is finally available in a nifty paperback format. Just for fun, I’ve posted the entire wraparound book jacket, so you can see what a nice job the folks at Ballantine have done with it. There was a bit of discussion about the best color to use as a background to give the paperback a different look and feel than the hardcover, and I think the light blue is a nice touch. You can click here to get it on Amazon, here for Barnes and Noble, and here to find it on Indiebound.

CiGzhBZXAAA7fdzIt was also neat this morning to see Random House tweet out a photo of the five books they launched today.  There’s Jim, in the photo at right, leaning casually up against the Rolling Stones.

I’ve been asked if there’s any material in the paperback that wasn’t in the hardcover, and the answer to that is: yes, but you probably won’t really notice. There were a couple of corrections to be made (somehow, I put Featherstone in the cast of Tales of the Tinkerdee, when, doggone it, I knew better than that), and a reference to the TV reboot of The Muppets, but for the most part, there are no real major additions. I got pretty much everything in the first time.

Oh, and in case you’re still without one, the hardcover will stay around for just a bit longer, too, before it’s finally taken out of print.

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Posted in Jim Henson, Jim Henson The Biography, Uncategorized

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What I Told You Was NOT True, Not Even From a Certain Point of View.

Posted on April 11, 2016 | Comments Off on What I Told You Was NOT True, Not Even From a Certain Point of View.

My bad: the publication date for George Lucas: A Life is actually Tuesday, December 6, and NOT Friday, December 16, as I reported earlier.*  (And here I was being SO smug about coming out the same day as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Which looks doggone cool.)

I should also note that while the current listing says the book will be 320 pages, I’m guessing that, given the current length of the manuscript, the final book will be longer than that. Which is probably why it’s got a thirty dollar price tag.

Oh, and did I tell you? George Lucas is now available to pre-order from several booksellers. And with the corrected pub date, you now know it’ll arrive in plenty of time for Christmas.

Click here to pre-order from Amazon.
Click here to pre-order from Barnes & Noble. (Nook only at the moment).
(I’ll update this information for Indiebound, once it’s available)

* Serendipitously, perhaps, December 6 was the pub date for  A History of New York, the first book published by Washington Irving in 1809.

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Posted in George Lucas, Uncategorized, works in progress

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Stay on Target…

Posted on March 8, 2016 | 4 comments

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Whew.

Late last night (or early this morning, whatever you want to call 12:04 a.m.) I completed the first draft of George Lucas: A Life.  It’s in the hands of John Parsley, my ace editor at Little, Brown, at this very moment.

The vital stats, you ask? It came in at just under 175,000 words–that includes the bibliography and endnotes–and took up 569 double-spaced pages.  How many pages of an actual book is that? Ya got me. (For reference: the first draft of Jim Henson came in at 700 pages, and eventually ended up as a 608-page hardback.  Out of the gate, George Lucas is already shorter than that. And there’s probably a height joke in there, but I’m not gonna make it . . .)

Technically, the draft was completed around 7:00 this morning, as that’s when I had Barb sit down at the desk and type the final period at the end of the last word. She’s definitely earned the right to be the one to finally blast this one into the net.

The fine folks at Little, Brown are still working hard to have this thing in your hands by Christmas of this year. If all goes as planned, it’ll be out December 10, 2016.

And now, I’m off to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters.

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Posted in George Lucas, My Patient Editor, Uncategorized, works in progress

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…And Then There Were Four.

Posted on March 2, 2016 | 1 comment

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Over at BIO, we’ve narrowed our list of Plutarch Award nominees from ten (see the list just below) to a literary Final Four.  You can see ’em in the pic above. And a really interesting bunch they are.

Voting stays open until May 15, which means once I finish George Lucas (should happen by the end of the weekend), I can get to reading these terrific books.  I’m especially looking forward to reading Peter Guralnick’s Sam Phillips, mainly because his Elvis book Careless Love is one of my favorite books of all time. And I’m not even an Elvis fan, thangyewverrahmush.

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Posted in Biographers International Organization, biographies, Plutarch Awards, Uncategorized

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And the Plutarch Award Nominees Are…

Posted on February 5, 2016 | Comments Off on And the Plutarch Award Nominees Are…

Over at Biographers International Organization — a group I’m proud to be the president of for another three months — we’ve announced the ten nominees for the Plutarch Award, presented to the year’s best biography. This is the world’s only literary biography prize given to biography, by biographers, which makes it a pretty neat deal.

BIO takes the Plutarch very seriously.  In fact, last year, with an eye on — among other issues — the hubbub surrounding the hijacking of the Hugo Award, we decided to better define and add a bit of rigor to our own process for selecting the initial ten nominees.  For this year, then, we dug into our esteemed Advisory Board and tapped Douglas Brinkley (who counts biographer among his long list of accomplishments) to chair a distinguished panel of judges who were tasked with sorting through, reading, digesting, and discussing as many of the biographies published in 2015 as they possibly could. The result of their hard work is the so-called shortlist of ten nominees.

And what nominees they are. This year’s ten nominees, in alphabetical order by author, are:

  • Irrepressible: A Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham by Emily Bingham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage, by Betty Boyd Caroli (Simon & Schuster)
  • Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter, by Cathy Curtis (Oxford)
  • The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon 1952-1961,
       by Irwin F. Gellman (Yale)
  • Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll, by Peter Guralnick (Little, Brown)
  • Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times by Anne Heller (New Harvest)
  • Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal by Jay Parini (Doubleday)
  • Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill by Sonia Purnell (Viking)
  • Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles (Knopf)
  • Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, by Rosemary Sullivan (Harper)

That’s a pretty distinguished group of books. And here’s something else I really like about this list: we’ve got six books written by women, and five books about women. As Jim Henson might say: “Lovely.”

Next, BIO’s Plutarch Committee will narrow the list to four finalists. Once those finalists have been selected, BIO members will get to vote for which of those four they think should be the Best Biography of the Year. We should receive that list in March, and the winner will be announced at the BIO Conference in June.

By the way, looking back at when I discussed the Plutarch last year at this time, I promised you I’d tell you who the winner was after the vote — and then I never came back and told you who that was.  It was Hermione Lee, for Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life.

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Posted in Biographers International Organization, Plutarch, Uncategorized

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Jim Henson in Paperback

Posted on January 19, 2016 | 2 comments

51yntBdmPAL.jpgAt long last, there’s an official release date — and official cover — for the paperback of Jim Henson: The Biography.  It’ll be coming your way on May 10, 2016.

You can pre-order it on Amazon right here, at Barnes & Noble here, or from IndieBound here. And, of course, you can also order it from your favorite bookstore near you.

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Posted in Jim Henson, Jim Henson The Biography, Neil Patrick Harris, Uncategorized

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Live! From (Upstate) New York!

Posted on January 18, 2016 | 1 comment

DSC_0320-280x270While I’ve been trying to keep appearances to a minimum as I finish up work on George Lucas, here’s one I couldn’t resist:

I’ll be giving an hour-long presentation on Jim Henson at the Guilderland Public Library in Guilderland, New York, on Friday, February 19, at 2:00 p.m.  As an added bonus, the library will have several Muppets on display, on loan courtesy of The Jim Henson Legacy.

Which Muppets, you ask? Ah, that’ll be a surprise for me as well.

The Guilderland Public Library is located at 2228 Western Avenue, just northwest of Albany. And did I mention it’s free? Of course it is — so if you’re in the area, come on by.

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More Comings and Goings

Posted on August 14, 2014 | Comments Off on More Comings and Goings

Urgh, I continue to be the worst. Blogger. Ever.

Hi, everyone.  How ya doin’?

Since I last saw you, I’ve come back from a wonderful trip to Kinderhook, New York, where I had been invited to come talk on Washington Irving.  Kinderhook is particularly important in Irving’s story, because it’s where he wrote his first book, A History of New York, in the summer of 1809, while recovering from the death of his 17-year-old fiancee. While I was there, I toured Martin Van Buren’s home, Lindenwald (which is THE ACTUAL HOUSE where Irving wrote his History of New York, though it was still owned by the Van Ness family at that time), and had the great pleasure of staying in this house right here:

kinderhook georgianThis is a local landmark, the Burgoyne House, where British general John Burgoyne was held after his capture by Benedict Arnold.  Arnold, however, had to stay at a very nice, but much smaller, house just down the street.  Which probably explains a lot about what happened later.

I spoke that afternoon at the Reformed Dutch Church, where I talked about Irving’s version of the Dutch history of New York. Afterwards, I was asked several really good questions, and only slightly disappointed the home town crowd when I informed them that Kinderhook was probably not the Sleepy Hollow of Irving’s famous tale (Had I been a bit faster on my feet, I’d have said that every place is Sleepy Hollow.  But it was hot.) Afterwards, we retreated to a reception at the old Jesse Merwin house, which at one time belonged to the historic figure who actually was the inspiration for Ichabod Crane. All in all, a lovely weekend — and I even got to bring Barb with me.

I’ve got several events coming up in the next few months, which I’ll post under the News tab as well.  

First, I’ll be speaking at the University of Maryland — Jim Henson’s alma mater, for those of you playing at home — on Friday, September 12, as part of the university’s parent’s weekend.  I’ll be at the University Book Center at Stamp Union, starting at 6:30 p.m.

In October, I’ll be attending the James River Writers Conference down in Richmond, Virginia, for three days (October 17-19), and I’ll be giving my hour long Jim Henson show on Friday night, October 17, as part of the many kick-off events. If you’re anywhere near Richmond that weekend and love books . . . well, it’s something you’d probably wanna do.

In November, I’ll be back at the University of Maryland (in association with the Prince George’s County Historical Society) to talk Jim Henson on Sunday, November 2, from 2:30 to 4, at the Hornbake Library.

Finally, on Wednesday, November 5, I’ll be making my long-overdue appearance at the New York Public Library’s Mid-Manhattan Library, at 6:30 p.m. I’m very excited about this one, especially as the library and I went back and forth for a long time trying to find a date that worked.

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Posted in book signings, Headless Horseman, Jim Henson, Sleepy Hollow, Uncategorized, Washington Irving

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