A Life in Biography

How to deal with a figure so involved with conspiracy theories: What does a biography have to add to history?

What happens when a biographer turns from the themes of his biography to a series of novels that are biographical and then some.

A conversation with Karen Christensen about her edition of Writing The Great Tom as well as her own work on a biography of Valerie Eliot.

An example from my Lillian Hellman biography.

Listen to a fascinating discussion of how biographers deal with success and suicide and what happens when you discover details that fundamentally alter what is known about your subject.

Why is it that some important actors are remembered and not others? Find out by listening to this discussion about Dan Van Neste’s biography of Warner Baxter.

Movie making in Hollywood’s heyday, but also much that applies to today, to Netflix, Amazon, and the world of streaming

Two biographers who befriended their subject and lived to tell an inspiring tale of a life well lived and a biography well written.

Sexologist, gerontologist, novelist, poet, anarchist—just some of the work that Alex Comfort accomplished, the subject of a brilliant new biography.

A podcast that reflects on how I got started on studying Sylvia Plath and why I’ve written so many books about her.

Rachel Shteir takes us inside of making of her Jewish Lives biography of the author of The Feminine Mystique

My response to an email asking me for help

Forthcoming podcasts on new biographies of Betty Friedan, Warner Baxter, Alex Comfort, Eleanor Powell, Jack Ruby, T. S. Eliot and my working in progress on presidential biography

My conversation with neurologist Steven Lomazow about his revelatory book about FDR and the impact of his health on biographies of Roosevelt

Just remember: You are the one in charge of fair use. Don’t give your rights away.

My talk with Marsha Gordon about her sensational new biography of an important writer you probably have never heard of.

Knowing your subject may mean knowing his or her discourse, and the same can be said of reading biographies when considering the voices of biographer and subject.

How I go about each day as a biographer, the sources I use, as I assemble my own archive and write my biography—in this case the one I’m working on now: Ronald Colman: Hollywood’s Gentleman Hero

Find out

A wide ranging discussion of how to write about science and medicine in a biographical narrative, with some talk of other biographers including Kai Bird and Hermione Lee

A continuation of the previous podcast about the variables in understanding a writer and his world.

Samuel R. Delany presents the writer as biographical subject and what it is the biographer needs to know about literary world and how reputations are made. But first a discussion of a movie, The Wife

What does it mean to be powerful in the literary world, and in what sense should the biographer take it seriously?

The correspondence with Samuel R. Delany continues, with many digressions, but all of them pertaining to biography and the work it can accomplish

The Sontag saga continues

The seventh part of what is turning out to be a saga—listened to its entirety it amounts to a class on biography that you can take for free.

A talk about Ed O’Shea’s recent book and what matters about Seamus Heaney’s experience in America

An intervention by the New York Times and the story of a club of unauthorized biographers

I continue the debate with Samuel R. Delany, reading from our correspondence and talking about it. In this episode, Sontag has her say.

Samuel R. Delany continues to point out the error of my ways, and I respond with my own letters and commentary.

I continue to read and comment on my correspondence with Samuel R. Delany concerning the proper behavior of a biographer.

The correspondence of Carl Rollyson and Samuel R. Delany, a latter day version of Oscar’s Wilde’s The Critic as Artist, in the form reminiscent of a Platonic dialogue.

The ethics of biography apply not only to the biographer but also to those who choose to cooperate with a biographer and those who do not.

Pay attention to the subtitle of Finding Jackie: A Life Reinvented. How Oline Eaton deals with the making and unmaking and making of a fascinating life.

We celebrate the late Marion Meade, novelist and biographer of Dorothy Parker, Buster Keaton, Woody Allen, and others by her fellow biographers and friends.

Some penetrating questions and comments on my practice as a biography in an interview with Karen Christensen

My resident Pacific Islands historian/biographer, Doug Munro,, discusses the successes and failures with sources, in the archives and in person, and I respond with my own tales of horror and deliverance

Part 2 of a conversation with Pacific Islands historian/biographer, Doug Munro, about the cross overs between history and biography, and on the polarization in Australia and here.

Historical archeologist Jack Elliott explains why we need a new biography of Faulkner’s great-grandfather. Listen to an authentic Mississippi voice!

A conversation about why history was not enough for Doug Munro, and why he turned to biography, which is also quite not enough

A year end podcast reflecting on the contingencies of biography.

My conversation with J. Michael Lennon, Mailer biographer and interlocutor reflecting on a lifetime with his subject.

A wide-ranging conversation about what you might call the music of biography.

I talk with Norman Lock about his American novel series, and why it should matter to biographers. This is my longest, most searching podcast.

Tennessee Williams, copyright, fair use, research—Ellen Brown covers it all

What it is like trying to capture a day by day account of William Faulkner’s life.

How a biographer begins with nothing—no contacts, no track record—and is successful anyway, writing biographies of Faron Young and Marty Robbins. And wait until you hear about her newsletter!

Are you the same person you were when you were a child? How this question pertains to biography—the one you are writing and mine.

A conversation with Kathleen Wickham about her book, James Meredith: Breaking the Barrier” and her other work dealing with journalists who covered the 1962 riot at Ole Miss