Tag Archives: Biographers International Organization

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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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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Plutarch Time!

Posted on May 12, 2015 | 2 comments

Plutarch2014-494x500One of the best things about being a member of Biographers International Organization (BIO)  is that each year, we get to vote for the recipient of the Plutarch Award, presented to the best biography of the year.* This is the only international literary award given by biographers to biography, which makes it pretty neat.  (It was inspired in part by the Edgar Award, presented each year by the Mystery Writers of America, and the Nebula, given annually by the  Science Fiction Writers of America.)

Here’s how it works: each year, a select committee of biographers puts together a list of ten nominees for the year’s best biography.** This list is presented to BIO members in good standing, who then make their selection by secret ballot. The winner (and three runners-up) will be announced (in suitably dramatic fashion, since I’m the one tasked with putting together the ceremony) at BIO’s Annual Conference, which will be held the first weekend in June at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

I should add for the record that as president of BIO, I don’t sit on the Plutarch Nomination Committee, and have no role in of the selection of the ten nominees; like all BIO members in good standing, my responsibility is to simply vote for the book on the list I think is the best.

And what a list it is this year–an interesting, diverse, even somewhat eclectic group of biographies, any of which would be a worthy winner. Wanna see? I won’t make you wait. Here are the ten books nominated for the 2015 Plutarch, listed alphabetically by author:

  • Nigel Hamilton, The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
  • Jeff Hobbs, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace (Scribner)
  • John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh ( W. Norton & Company)
  • Hermione Lee, Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life (Knopf)
  • Helen Rappaport, The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra (St. Martin’s)
  • Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life (Viking Adult)
  • Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller (Random House)
  • Will Swift, Pat and Dick: The Nixons, An Intimate Portrait of a Marriage (Threshold Editions)
  • Edward White, The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • N. Wilson, Victoria: A Life (Penguin Press)

I’ll be back here in mid-June to let you know who the winner is. And if you’d like to see a list of previous winners (and nominees), click here.

* In 2015, we vote on biographies published in 2014, which is why the medallion reads “2014”

** As a result of this process, we have NO SAD PUPPIES. (And we send kind thoughts to our friends at the Hugo Awards. Lost? Click here for more information on this year’s Hugo kerfluffle.)

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Posted in awards, Biographers International Organization, Washington Biography Group

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In Which I Am On CNN, Go To Boston, and Get Back In The Chair

Posted on June 6, 2014 | 4 comments

Good grief, it’s really been over a month since I last checked in here? I’m never gonna get a John Scalzi-type following at this rate…

First thing’s first–and because everyone asked me about it at the time–the CNN piece on the Muppets finally aired in late May. The CNN crew had come to my house here in Maryland ages ago to film me in my basement office, and then I never heard anything more about it. I had assumed it had turned into vapor trails, until a sharp-eyed fan on Twitter alerted me to it: a half-hour special called CNN Spotlight: The Muppets, with a brief look at Jim Henson about a third of the way through it.

In case you missed it (and even if you didn’t), here’s the piece in its entirety:

 

I also had the great pleasure of speaking in mid-April at the newly-opened Gaithersburg Library here in my neck of the words, with the added bonus that C-SPAN was in attendance to record my hour-long talk in its entirety for BookTV.  No word yet on when, or even if, it’ll air, but I’ll let you know what I hear. More than likely, some eagle-eyed Muppet fan will spot it before I do and let me know about it.

In mid-May, I headed for Boston to attend Biographers International Organization’s annual conference. It was my privilege to be elected the organization’s president in early spring, but that meant that in addition to the two panels I was on and the one panel I was moderating, I also had to act as emcee for much of the conference–which also meant I didn’t have as much time to spend catching up with everyone as I would have liked. One of the founding principles of BIO is to address with what we informally call “the loneliness quotient,” so the opportunity to mingle and trade stories with other biographers is one of the genuine pleasures of attending the BIO conference. It’s also perhaps the only place on the planet where you can grouse about having to assemble the index for your book (“And that index?!? AMIRIGHT?”) and have everyone in the room nodding sympathetically.

At the final reception, we announced the finalists and winner of the Plutarch Award, presented to the best biography of the year, as chosen by biographers.  I was pleased and honored that Jim Henson was among the finalists (along with Ray Monk’s Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center and Jill Lepore’s Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin), with the well-deserved winner being Linda Leavell’s Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore. If you haven’t read any of these fine biographies, do yourself a favor and grab any one of them. Better yet, grab ’em all.

And, oh yeah . . . I’m at work again. On Something Cool. That means I’ll be back at the desk regularly again –which I’m also hoping means I can get back here more often. Bear with me.

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Posted in BIO, Boston, CNN, Jim Henson, Muppets, Plutarch Awards

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On Your Mark . . .

Posted on January 25, 2013 | Comments Off on On Your Mark . . .

There’s a nasty cold snap churning its way across the Midwest and eastern Atlantic, plunging temperatures into the teens and low 20s. We’ve had just a bit of snow here in our neck of the woods in Maryland — it’s falling even as I write this — but I’m inside, hard at work on all the little things that need to be done as we move Jim Henson’s biography into production. As of today, we’re just shy of eight months until publication. That seems like it’s a long way away — but it’s really not. Particularly from where I sit.

I went up to New York for a few days last week to sit in on a few discussions about marketing and promotion — and while I can’t tell you just yet what the crack team at Random House has in mind, I can say I’m very excited about pretty much all of it. I also had the chance to hold in my hands a bound version of the manuscript, complete with a mock-up title page (and yeah, it looks like we’ve arrived at an Official Name for it — more on that once it’s Officially Official) that gets circulated in-house and will be going out for blurbs shortly.

I’m still going through photographs and running down clearances — a labor-intensive process which involves putting together long lists of extended quotes, lyrics, quotes from TV shows and movies, and bits of correspondence that I’ll need permission to use. But in the meantime, as vice president of Biographers International Organization, I’m working hard with our president, board, and team of volunteers to put together what looks like a fantastic conference in New York City this coming May. But don’t take my word for it; check out the conference website right here. Better yet, once you’ve checked it out, sign up to attend. This promises to be our largest and most informative — and entertaining — conference yet.

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A Quick Rundown

Posted on May 31, 2011 | 1 comment

Apologies for being away so long — I keep meaning to update here each day, and even get as far as opening up the blogging window and then  . . . well, things seem to get away from me, and I end up closing out the window.  In lieu of a proper post, then, here’s a quick rundown on what I’m up to:

– The BIO conference was a spectacular success, well-attended with truly interesting panels, and an amazing lunchtime keynote address by Robert A. Caro (the speech was filmed, and I’ll put it up here as soon as it’s available).  I participated on one panel, moderated another, and spent a good part of between-panel time buttonholing some terrific writers and begging them to update me on their works in progress. Trust me when I say that there are some great books coming out. In hardback, even.

During the course of the day, I made Kitty Kelley laugh (we were seated next to each other at lunch), got hugged by a Pulitzer winner, and tried really hard — and failed — not to geek out when I spoke briefly to Robert Caro as he signed my hardcover of Master of the Senate. I also had the honor of being elected to the BIO board, and I’m looking forward to the coming year. (Thanks, fellow BIO members, for the vote—and here’s a special shout out to Charles J. Shields for nominating me.)

– I’m making a quick sprint to New York this week for another conversation with An Amazing Person — and then another with a different person the following weekend, when I’ll piggyback a bit of work onto an otherwise family-focused weekend in New York with Barb and Madi.  It’s getting to the point where I can do the Northeast Regional train to New York in my sleep.  And have.

– Finally, to answer what’s continuing to be the number one question I receive each day (namely, How’s the book going?): I’m pleased to say it’s going well — and so far, it looks like I’m on target to ensure a Christmas 2012 release.  But that’s still a long way away, and there’s a long way to go, so stay tuned.

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Posted in BIO, Robert Caro, works in progress

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Big Fun at the BIO

Posted on May 14, 2011 | 3 comments

The second annual conference of the Biographers International Organization (BIO) is now officially one week away, on Saturday, May 21, at the National Press Club (and several other sites, such as the Library of Congress and National Archives) right here in beautiful Washington, DC.  If you’re a biographer, an aspiring biographer, or someone who enjoys biographies, you should be here.

What’ll you find? In a word: lots.  BIO works hard to offer panels that are packed with information, staffed by some of some of the best writers, editors, agents, grant writers, publicists, and publishers in the business—so many, in fact, that you’ll probably find it tough to narrow down your choices.

You’ll also get a keynote lunch headlined by—wait for it—Robert Caro, winner of the 2011 BIO award and . . . lemme see . . . oh yeah: the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Twice.  The end of day features a reception where you’ll have the chance to mingle with pretty much everyone, buy books (and get ’em signed), and listen to Stacy Schiff (of Cleopatra fame) in an interview/discussion in Inside the Actor’s Studio style.

What are you waiting for? Click here for tons more information. Online registration closes soon — but if you miss the online deadline, don’t worry. Shoot BIO an e-mail and they’ll take care of you.

Oh, and if you hurry, there’s still space available in several pre-conference workshops being held on Friday, May 20, at the Library of Congress and the National Archives.  In addition to an exclusive tour of the Library open only to BIO attendees, space was still available as of yesterday in several of the daylong workshops, including the Library of Congress’ Performing Arts Division, Geography and Map Division, and a favorite of mine, the Motion Picture and Television Division, which has a really fun (though surprisingly small) reading room. For the latest information, click here.

See you in DC.

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Posted in BIO, Washington Biography Group, Washington DC

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Breakfast (and Lunch) of Champions

Posted on February 9, 2011 | Comments Off on Breakfast (and Lunch) of Champions

There’s something else I’ve come to love about biography: biographers.  Last week, Barb and I had a wonderful Indian dinner in DC with Charles J. Shields and his lovely wife Guadalupe, who had braved bad weather and slick roads to attend the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference. It was a terrific time, with good food and even better company — and I’m even more excited now about getting my hands on Charles’ upcoming biography of Kurt Vonnegut, which his publisher, Henry Holt,  is rightly making its Christmas 2011 centerpiece bio.

Speaking of top-notch biographers, the Biographers International Organization recently announced that its recipient for the 2011 BIO award — which also means its keynote lunch speaker for this year’s conference here in DC — will be Robert Caro.

Yes, you heard me — and forgive me for being crass here, but — ROBERT EFFING CARO. If there’s a Mount Rushmore of Biographers, he’s on it.  If there’s a Beatles of Biographers, he’s John Lennon. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, his comprehensive, multi-part biography of President Lyndon Johnson stands — in my view, at least — as the ultimate example of what great biography should be: thorough without being mind-numbing, dramatic without being histrionic, and scholarly without being pedantic. (I’ve described my favorite book of his, the third volume of his Lyndon Johnson biography, Master of the Senate, as a biographical thriller.)

We’re less than a hundred days away from the 2011 BIO conference, and slots — as well as hotel rooms — are filling quickly, so if you’re interested in attending, click here for complete information.  As a member of the Washington Biography Group, which is serving as this year’s host, I’ll be moderating one panel, but I’ll also be participating as a panelist during the session on “The Role for Fiction in Biography.” Plus, it’s your chance to see Robert Effing Caro live and in person, which is more than enough, really.

Last year’s conference was hugely successful, and a lot of fun.  And you don’t have to be a biographer or even a writer to attend. Just loving books is more than enough.

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Odds and Ends

Posted on December 9, 2010 | Comments Off on Odds and Ends

It’s funny, when I started this blog several years ago, I was fairly good about updating and posting — on a good week, I might post three times, sometimes daily.  At the time I was doing the political job by day, while promoting Washington Irving and working behind the scenes on Jim Henson. And I thought, “Man, if I ever get to the point where I can stay home and write full time, I can blog daily! I’ll be a blogging machine!”

Yeah.  Well.  Not so much, sorry.  But I think you’ll thank me in the end, since it means I’m devoting more of my writing time to my current project than to the blog.  Still, that’s not to say there isn’t plenty else going on.  Like for instance:

–  Early registration is already open for the second annual Biographers International Organization (BIO) conference, which will take place in Washington, DC on May 21, 2011.  Home base for the event will be the National Press Club, but conference sessions will also be held at the National Archives and the Library of Congress.  More information — including a tentative list of panels — is available at the BIO website, by clicking here.

– Barb and I attended an absolutely spectacular lecture at the Smithsonian the other night, where we got to listen to Bob Hirst, the general editor of the new Mark Twain Autobiography, discuss Twain’s life, work, and the problems an editor stumbles across when trying to decide exactly what is meant by an “authoritative” autobiography.  To a packed house at the Natural History Museum, Hirst showed photos of Twain’s original typed manuscripts, which had been written on by Twain, corrected by later typists, smudged by typesetters, and revised by previous editors who thought they knew better than Twain how to tell his life story.  Looking at the mess on each page, it was sometimes unclear which corrections were Twain’s — was the slash through a comma, for instance, really his correction or that of a later editor? — which really made you appreciate the hard work, and the detective work, that goes into a project like this.

– This Saturday, we’re attending a showing of A Christmas Carol over at Ford’s Theatre.  It’s one of those things that’s become something of a Christmas tradition with us, in the same way that we always watch Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas or A Christmas Story. Plus it’s an opportunity to go see the Christmas trees for each state over at the White House, and the huge tree at the Capitol.  The only wrench in the plan right now is the weather.  It was a whopping 19 degrees this morning here in Maryland, which is not conducive to strolls on the Mall.

– Finally, here’s a really interesting piece on Herman Melville over in the New York Times, courtesy of my colleague — and 19th century historian and fellow political speech writer — Ted Widmer.

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Almost Like Being There

Posted on August 6, 2010 | 1 comment

As you can imagine, the last week has been fairly crazy — crazy in a good way, natch — and I apologize for not checking in here a bit more quickly.  I appreciate all the kind e-mails and notes — you’re all Good People.  Thanks for all the nice words.  I mean it.

BIO guru Jamie Morris sent out a heads up the other day to note that many of the remarks and sessions from the Compleat Biographers Conference in May have been made available by the University of Massachusetts — our hosts that day — for your viewing pleasure.  And just so you don’t have to go and find them, here they are:

First, here’s the opening session, with welcoming remarks by Ray Sheppard, and the opening address by Pulitzer Prize winner Debby Applegate (The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher), who discusses the need for an organization like BIO, where writers can get together to learn from and support each other (Her stunning “I don’t know what to tell you” story comes at about seven minutes in):

Next, here’s a panel on Trends in Biography, where journalist D. Quincy Whitney, Henry Holt senior editor Helen Atsma, and biographers Gayle Feldman and Megan Marshall (The Peabody Sisters) discuss the future of biography — and, at times, publishing in general:

Next , here’s Harriet Reisen (Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women), editor Carole Deboer-Langworthy, Beatrice Mousli (Virginia Woolf), and Steve Weinberg (Armand Hammer: The Untold Story) discussing one of the most surprisingly difficult parts of writing a biography, Selecting A Subject:

Now it’s the keynote speech by Jean Strouse, winner of the first BIO Award (there’s a bit of organizational housekeeping to take care of before Ms. Strouse speaks — her keynote begins at about 17 minutes in):

Next up, biographers Debby Applegate, James Bradley (Flags of Our Fathers), Anne C. Heller (Ayn Rand and the World She Made), and editors Yen Cheong and Lissa Warren head up a lively discussion on Marketing Your Biography. It’s one thing to write it; now how do you ensure it finds readers?

Finally, here’s a fun session — courtesy of Melissa Nathanson (who’s working on a bio of Justice Blackmun), Charles J. Shields (Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee), Will Swift (The Roosevelts and the Royals), Nancy Kriplen (The Eccentric Billionaire: John D. MacArthur–Empire Builder, Reluctant Philanthropist, Relentless Adversary), and Kitty Kelley (Oprah) — on Dealing With The Family of your chosen subject:

Like what you see? C’mon, how could you not? If you’re not a member already, think about joining BIO. Go here.

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