A Life in Biography

By Carl Rollyson

Talks and interviews about the life of biography as experienced by a biographer over forty years and fourteen biographies, dealing with subjects ranging from Sylvia Plath to William Faulkner, Marilyn ... more

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FAQs about A Life in Biography:

How many episodes does A Life in Biography have?

The podcast currently has 224 episodes available.

A Life in Biography episodes:

July 11, 2020 Episode 14: Who Deserves A Biography?
The answer to who deserves a biography is everyone, or anyone. It all depends on the materials you have, if the story moves you, and you know how to tell it.
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8min
July 04, 2020 Episode 13: Homage to Deirdre Bair and the Purpose of Biography
My tribute to one of the great biographers of our time and why her work matters, and why biography matters.
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16min
June 27, 2020 How I Became a Biographer
A quick explanation of how it all started with Marilyn Monroe.
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15min
June 21, 2020 Fair Use Biography: Forget about the Don’ts in Most Cases. Just go ahead.
My account for forty years of dealing with fair use, biographical subjects, and publishers.
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32min
June 14, 2020 The Whys and Wherefores of Documentary Biography
How dating all the days of a life provide a different way of approaching what is left out in other biographies.
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10min
June 06, 2020 Episode 9: How To Begin a Biography: The Case of William Faulkner
I look at how biographers have begun their biographies and the merits of different kinds of openings and why biography has been called factitious.
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22min
May 30, 2020 Episode 8: How to End a Biography, The Case of Sylvia Plath
I read from the last paragraphs of Plath biographies, commenting on them, and explain my own choices in writing American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath.
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23min
May 24, 2020 Episode 7: Prefaces to Biography
Who is the biographer? And why does it matter?
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28min
May 16, 2020 Building a Better Biography: How to Capture the Whole Man
I give a sense of the interplay between Faulkner the man, his fiction, and his film writing.
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25min
May 10, 2020 Sylvia Plath, Meet Rebecca West
I explore why it is that Sylvia Plath never seemed to be aware of Rebecca West, a world class writer, who still has so much to say to the readers of Plath and of modern literature.
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8min

FAQs about A Life in Biography:

How many episodes does A Life in Biography have?

The podcast currently has 224 episodes available.