Biographers International Organization

Sara offers her advice to anyone writing their first book: get a therapist and take a walk. Kate cut a story she loved — about two sisters fighting over politics in 1880 — because it didn’t belong. Kevin is in a race he didn’t sign up for, and Katie Rose is asked if she’s ever thought about quitting. She says no. She wants this book to exist; that’s enough. Part five of our podcast miniseries, produced by Jenny Skoog, explores the quiet, unglamorous work of writing biography — and what it actually feels like. “Four Paths, One Impossible Dream” follows four authors navigating the challenges of writing biography. Over eight months in 2025, BIO Podcast producer Jenny Skoog spoke with comedian Sara Benincasa, tackling Abraham Lincoln; professor Kate Culkin, working on a book about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughters; historian Kevin McGruder, who has spent decades researching Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher; and journalist Katie Rose Quandt, on the challenges of completing a book proposal while pregnant.

In this fourth episode of our six-part miniseries, Sara finds out that President Lincoln presided over the largest mass execution on American soil, and she wants to know why nobody taught her that. Kevin has a death certificate that answers a question other scholars keep pretending is a mystery. Katie Rose reads congressional testimony from a hundred years ago that could have been written this morning. And Kate has to reckon with the fact that one of her subjects was a racist. The ideas. The arguments. The stuff that keeps them up at night, and BIO Podcast producer Jenny Skoog explores these dilemmas with the four authors. “Four Paths, One Impossible Dream” follows four authors navigating the challenges of writing biography. Over eight months in 2025, BIO Podcast producer Jenny Skoog spoke with comedian Sara Benincasa, tackling Abraham Lincoln; professor Kate Culkin, working on a book about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughters; historian Kevin McGruder, who has spent decades researching Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher; and journalist Katie Rose Quandt, on the challenges of completing a book proposal while pregnant.

The third episode of our six-part miniseries goes behind the scenes of biography’s business realities — the contracts, proposals, and market pressures authors navigate to get their books published. “Four Paths, One Impossible Dream” follows four authors navigating the challenges of writing biography. Over eight months in 2025, BIO Podcast producer Jenny Skoog spoke with comedian Sara Benincasa, tackling Abraham Lincoln; professor Kate Culkin, working on a book about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughters; historian Kevin McGruder, who has spent decades researching Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher; and journalist Katie Rose Quandt, on the challenges of completing a book proposal while pregnant.

In the second episode of our special six-part miniseries, the authors share updates on their research and writing. “Four Paths, One Impossible Dream” follows four authors navigating the challenges of writing biography. Over eight months in 2025, BIO Podcast producer Jenny Skoog spoke with comedian Sara Benincasa, tackling Abraham Lincoln; professor Kate Culkin, working on a book about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughters; historian Kevin McGruder, who has spent decades researching Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher; and journalist Katie Rose Quandt, on the challenges of completing a book proposal while pregnant.

This time, we present the first episode in a special six-part miniseries that follows four authors on their biographical path. We spent the last eight months of 2025 with comedian Sara Benincasa who is tackling Abraham Lincoln; professor Kate Culkin is publishing a book about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughters that nobody taught her how to promote; historian Kevin McGruder has been carrying around his subject, Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher, for decades; and journalist Katie Rose Quandt is finishing a book proposal about five influential women while pregnant with her third child. BIO member Jenny Skoog sat down with each of these writers to ask the obvious question: who gets to write biography?

When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy is the latest book by veteran journalist and author David Margolick. Published by Schocken in November 2025, this book examines the life of one of America’s most enigmatic and influential comedians. Margolick reported on legal affairs for The New York Times, and he was then a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. His many books include Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and A World on the Brink, Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns, and Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock. Fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli interviewed David Margolick.

Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West (Knopf, 2025) is the latest book by this award-winning author and editor of nineteen books on the American Civil War and the American West. A retired Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State, Cozzens also served as a captain in the U. S. Army. His previous book, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West, received the 2017 Gilder Lehrman Prize for the best military history work in the English language. In December 2024, The Economist selected it as one of the seven greatest military history books ever written. In 2002, Cozzens received the American Foreign Service Association’s highest award, given annually to one Foreign Service Officer for exemplary moral courage, integrity, and creative dissent. Fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell interviewed Peter Cozzens.

This author’s The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram: The Man Who Stared Down World War II in the Name of Love was published by Viking/Penguin Random House this month. Whitmire is a respected historian and African American Studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research has won awards and funding from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Programs, and the American Library Association, and she has been invited to residences at Yaddo, Ucross, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Fellow biographer and BIO member Eric K. Washington interviewed Ethelene Whitmire.

Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South (Vanderbilt University, March 2024) is the tenth anniversary edition of this author’s award-winning, New York Times bestselling biography. Maraniss has authored nonfiction sports and social justice books for adults, teens, and children, and his books have received numerous honors, including the Lillian Smith Book Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Special Recognition Honor. He has been named to the American Library Association’s Rainbow Book List, the RISE Feminist Book List, and Esquire’s 100 Best Baseball Books Ever Written. Maraniss directs special projects at the Vanderbilt University athletic department and manages the university’s Sports & Society Initiative. BIO member and BIO podcast producer Jenny Skoog interviewed Andrew Maraniss.

Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audrey Moore, published by Pantheon in November 2025, is this latest book by this internationally known and award-winning writer, cultural analyst, and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Farmer’s first book, Remaking Black Power, was shortlisted for numerous prizes, and she has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Whiting Foundation. Farmer’s insights have appeared in multiple venues, including Harper’s Bazaar, NPR, The Washington Post, and Teen Vogue. Fellow biographer and BIO member Tamara Payne interviewed Ashley D. Farmer.

This author and scholar’s latest book, Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson, will be published in February 2026 by Other Press. Curran, a distinguished humanities professor at Wesleyan University, has written or edited six books, including Who’s Black and Why: A Hidden Chapter in the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race. It was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and it won the Association of American Publishers Prose Award. Curran’s journalistic writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Guardian, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Paris Review, Il Pais, Folha de S. Paola and the Wall Street Journal. BIO member and BIO podcast producer Jenny Skoog interviewed Andrew Curran.  

Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford and Pride (Harper, November 2025) and Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, October 2025) are the latest books by these veteran authors. Carla Kaplan is an award-winning Northeastern University professor who has published seven previous books, including Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters and Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, both New York Times Notable Books.   Amanda Vaill has authored three previous biographies, Hotel Florida, Somewhere, and the best-selling Everybody Was So Young – a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She also co-authored, contributed to, or edited several books in the field of arts and culture. Vaill is an Emmy-nominated screenwriter, and her journalism and criticism have appeared in many publications. In December 2025, Kaplan’s Troublemaker and Vail’s Pride and Pleasure biographies were longlisted for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Awards. In this special episode, Kaplan and Vaill interview each other about their research and writing journeys.  

Mark Twain, published in May 2025 by Penguin Press, is this celebrated, multiple award-winning biographer’s latest book. Chernow is the recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal, and his first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award. Chernow’s Washington: A Life won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and Alexander Hamilton—the inspiration for the Broadway musical—won the George Washington Book Prize. Ron Chernow, a former president of PEN America, has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and is one of only three living biographers to have won the Gold Medal for Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell interviewed him.   Listen to part one of the interview here.

Mark Twain, published in May 2025 by Penguin Press, is this celebrated, multiple award-winning biographer’s latest book. Chernow is the recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal, and his first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award. Chernow’s Washington: A Life won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and Alexander Hamilton—the inspiration for the Broadway musical—won the George Washington Book Prize. Ron Chernow has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and is one of only three living biographers to have won the Gold Medal for Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This past president of PEN America was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell.

Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, A Writer’s Life, is the latest book by this scholar and author, published in November 2025 by Blackstone Publishing. Goddard is an associate professor of literary studies at Utah Valley University, and the Mellon Foundation and a Bordin-Gillette Fellowship from the University of Michigan have funded his work. BIO member and BIO Podcast Producer Jenny Skoog interviewed Goddard.   Note: BIO, the Biographers International Organization’s podcast series, will return on January 9, 2026, with a special episode featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow, whose fascinating books include examinations of Alexander Hamilton, Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington, and his latest biography of Mark Twain.