May 17–18, 2014
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B I O FIFTH ANNUAL Compleat 2014 CONFERENCEBiographer May 17–18, 2014 University of Massachusetts Boston 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, Massachusetts The 2013 Plutarch Award Biographers International Organization – with the generous support of the Chappell Great Lives Program – is proud to present the Plutarch Award for the best biography of 2013, as chosen by you, the world’s only organization of biographers. Congratulations to the ten nominees for the Best Biography of 2013: The 2014 BIO Award Recipient: Stacy Schiff Stacy Schiff won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for . Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) She is the author as well of , a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Saint-Exupéry and , , awarded the A Great Improvisation: Franklin France, and the Birth of America George Washington Book Prize and the Ambassador Book Award. Her most recent biography, was published in 2010. Translated Cleopatra: A Life, into 30 languages, won the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award Cleopatra for Biography. Praised for her meticulous scholarship and her witty style, Schiff has contributed frequently to op-ed page and . She has received fellowships from the The New York Times The New York Times Book Review Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. The recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Schiff was named a 2011 Library Lion of the New York Public Library. A native of western Massachusetts, Schiff lives in New York City. She is at work on a book about the Salem witch trials, to be published by Little, Brown. BIO Officers Joan Hedrick Conference BIO Award Brian Jay Jones, President Michael Holroyd Site Committee Nomination Cathy Curtis, Vice President Eric Lax Ray Shepard, Chair Committee David Levering Lewis Barbara Burkhardt, Secretary Chip Bishop Will Swift, Chair John Matteson Carol DeBoer-Langworthy, Allison Chisolm Chip Bishop William S. McFeely Treasurer Marlene Donovan Kate Buford Jon Meacham Elizabeth Harris Barbara Burkhardt 2014-2015 Marion Meade Sally Hill John Farrell Nancy Milford Board of Directors Sarah Jensen Barbara Lehman-Smith Lois Banner Andrew Morton Melinda Ponder Patricia Brady Martin J. Sherwin Martin Quitt Plutarch Nomination Carol Berkin T.J. Stiles Marian St Onge Committee William Taubman Chip Bishop Phyllis Steele Chip Bishop Terry Teachout Kate Buford Jack Farrell Publicity Committee Barbara Burkhardt Conference Program Joshua Kendall Deirdre David Committee Charles J. Shields, Chair Vanda Krefft Gayle Feldman Allison Chisolm Andrew Lownie Cathy Curtis, Chair Amanda Foreman Natalie Dykstra Janet Reid Kate Buford Beverly Gray Norman Finkelstein Hans Renders Kitty Kelley Greg Daugherty, Cathryn Keller Program Editor Linda Simon Joshua Kendall Diana Parsell Deirdre David Barbara Lehman Smith Marc Leepson Eve LaPlante Beverly Gray Bill Crawley, Hans Renders Amy Schapiro ex officio Anne Heller William Souder Quincy Whitney Rowley Prize Josh Kendall Will Swift Sonja Williams Committee Mark Leepson Ray Shepard Gayle Feldman, Chair Advisory Council Jennifer Cockburn Debby Applegate, Chair Bill Souder Will Swift Anne Heller Deirdre Bair Roy Schreiber Douglas Brinkley Carol Sklenicka Catherine Clinton Will Swift Doris Kearns Goodwin Biographers International Organization 3 Saturday, May 17 | Panels and Panelists “And Then What?”: Panelists Creating Suspense in Biography JOHN ALOYSIUS FARRELL has had a prize-winning career as 8:45–10:00AM LOCATION: BALLROOM B a newspaperman, notably for and . He has covered every presidentialThe Denver campaignPost The since Boston 1976, There are different kinds of biographies— twoGlobe wars, and the troubles in Northern Ireland. He has also cradle-to-grave, slice-of-life, group, literary, driven an ice cream truck, shined shoes, waited tables, cared for celebrity, cultural—but every biographer wants animals in a medical laboratory, and worked in construction and on a kibbutz. His biography to keep readers engaged and turning pages. What (2000) won the D.B. HardemanTip O’Neill Prize and for the theDemocratic best techniques can a biographer use to that end? What bookCentury on Congress and was excerpted in devices from novels and films, like foreshadowing (2004). Pols: Great Writers and cliff hangers, work in biography, and how are on Americanwon Politicians the 2012 Clarence Darrow: biography Attorney award. for theFarrell they best used? Biographers of different eras and isDamned working on a biographyLos Angeles of Richard Times Nixon. His website is . kinds will explore how to pique and maintain www.jafarrell.com interest, and create suspense. CARLA KAPLAN, the Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Northeastern University and a former Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Moderator , (a NotableZora Book Neale and Hurston: finalist A for GAYLE FELDMAN is under contract to Random House for a NAACP’sLife in Letters “ImageNew Award”) York Times and biography of its cofounder Bennett Cerf. She is also New York . She Thehas Eroticsedited of numerous Talk: Women’s works correspondent of the British magazine of the book ofWriting African and FeministAmerican Paradigms literature. The Bookseller, business. Her previous books are a cancer memoir, (HarperCollins)Miss Anne in Harlem: is a The White You Don’t Have (Norton, 1994), and Women Notable of the Black Book Renaissance and one of s New“Ten York Best” to Be Your Mother Best and Worst of Times: The (2003), published in conjunction booksTimes of the year. Kaplan’s next Publishersbook, a biography Weekly’ of Jessica Changing Business of Trade Books with a fellowship at the Columbia Journalism School. She was Mitford, is forthcoming from HarperCollins. book news editor and a contributing editor at JOHN MATTESON is a Distinguished Professor of English and has written for , , Publishers Weekly, the at John Jay College in the City University of New York. He , The New York Times andSelf The Daily. Beast Los Angeles Times The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation holds an A.B. in history from Princeton University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. His first book, , was awardedEden’s Outcasts: the Pulitzer The Story Prizeof Louisa for May biography. Alcott and Her Father received the Ann M. Sperber PrizeThe from Lives Fordham of Margaret University Fuller and was shortlisted for BIO’s inaugural Plutarch Prize. Matteson has just completed an annotated edition of for W.W. Norton and Company. Little Women Join top-tier writers from the U.S. and around the Biographers International Organization globe at this nationally acclaimed annual event extends its thanks to where journalists, writers, readers, students, and educators meet to discuss their accomplishments, aspirations, and angst. THE MAYBORN • $15,000 in cash awards Literary Nonfiction Conference • Opportunities to meet with publishers and literary agents July 18–20, 2014 • Inspiration for practicing the craft of writing at Grapevine, TX the highest possible level • Mayborn Biography Fellowship provides a creative residency in Santa Fe, NM. 4 Biographers International Organization The Challenges of Group Biography Twice Marginalized: The Challenges of Writing 8:45–10:00AM LOCATION: ROOM 3540 About Little-Known Gay and Lesbian Subjects A single life comes with a handy built-in narrative 8:45–10:00AM LOCATION: ROOM 2540 structure, but what about two lives or ten? What happens when an author must make the What strategies are available to create thematic case to agents and publishers that a book’s subject coherence? Moreover, how much room should is not just obscure and gay or lesbian (a doubly biographers devote to covering familiar turf daunting combination), but also someone who can as opposed to highlighting new insights and be presented as a rediscovery? Three biographers interpretations? And how about the research discuss the paths they took, from the initial process? What kind of digging can be done impetus for their books to publishing contracts. to shed new light on subjects whose major biographers have spent years in the archives? Moderator BRIAN HALLEY is acquisitions editor for the University of Moderator Massachusetts Press, based at the University of Massachusetts JOSHUA KENDALL, a freelance journalist, has written for Boston. After earning an M.A. in literature at the University numerous publications including , of London, Halley started his publishing career assisting a , andThe New. He York has Times writtenThe literary agent at the Sayle Agency in London. He then became biographiesWall Street Journal of theFinancial lexicographers Times, PeterSlate Mark Roget (Putnam, an editor at Beacon Press, acquiring books in environmental 2008), author of , and Noah Webster (Putnam, studies, nature writing, LGBT issues, and social justice. At Roget’s Thesaurus UMass Press, Halley started the 2011), author of . His most recent book is Environmental History of the Webster’s Dictionary (Grand series; coordinates the America’s Obsessives: The Compulsive Energy That Built a Nation Northeast and the Studies in series;Print Culture and acquires and History Central, 2013), which profiles seven American icons, including of the Book American Popular Music Thomas Jefferson, Henry Heinz, Charles Lindbergh, and in American Studies, environmental studies/history, urban Estee Lauder. A graduate of Yale University, Kendall is an studies, and regional books. Associate Fellow of Yale’s Trumbull College. Panelists Panelists JIM ELLEDGE is the author of Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The DAVID HAJDU is a professor at Columbia University and a , recently published by Overlook Press.Tragic Life His of book an Outsider , a collection Artist of prose poems, was issued by critic for . He is author of four books, including H The New Republic and Lethe Press, and won the Lambda Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn Positively 4th Street: The Literary Award forA Historygay poetry of My in Tattoo: 2006. A With Poem David Groff, Lives and. Both Times books of Joan were Baez, finalists Bob Dylan, for Mimi the BaezNational Farina Book and RichardCritics he edited Farina Who’s. He lives Yer Daddy? in Atlanta.