Biographers International Organization

This week we interview Brad Snyder, author of Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment, published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2022. As a Georgetown University law professor, Snyder teaches constitutional law, constitutional history, and sports law. He was a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in constitutional studies, and he is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Supreme Court History. Snyder has written three previous books including The House of Truth: A Washington Political Salon and the Foundations of American Liberalism (2017) and A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports (2006). Brad Snyder was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

This week we interview Yunte Huang, a Guggenheim Fellow and author of Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History, published by Liveright in August 2023. Huang has taught at Harvard University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a professor of English. He also is the author of Inseparable and the Edgar Award–winning biography Charlie Chan. Both of those books were National Book Critics Circle Award finalists. Huang speaks frequently about American popular culture. For this episode, Yunte Huang was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

Happy New Year! This special episode features a fascinating presentation by the 2023 National Humanities Awardee, Tulane University history professor, television and podcast host, and celebrated biographer, Walter Issacson. His September 28, 2023, “Lessons About Living with Genius,” lecture was presented at the Leon Levy Center for Biography in the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in Manhattan. Issacson’s latest book, Elon Musk, was published in September of last year by Simon and Schuster. His previous books include, The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race (2021), Leonardo do Vinci (2017), The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014), Steve Jobs (2011), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), Kissinger: A Biography (1992), and the co-written, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986).

This week, we interview author Justin Martin, who specializes in meticulously researched and engagingly delivered American history books. His most recent, A Fierce Glory: Antietam, the Desperate Battle That Saved Lincoln and Doomed Slavery, was published by Da Capo Press in September 2018. This group biography is about Antietam—a turning point in the Civil War—in which Martin emphasizes character development over troop movements and portrays key figures both on and off the battlefield on that fateful day: Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and Clara Barton. Martin was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.    

This week, we interview Maryemma Graham, author of the first comprehensive biography of famed poet, writer, and educator Margaret Walker. The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker was published by Oxford University Press in December 2022. A Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Kansas and Founding Director of the History of Black Writing at the University of Mississippi, Graham has published 12 books, including The Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel and, with Jerry W. Ward, The Cambridge History of African American Literature. Maryemma Graham was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

This week, we interview Beverly Gage, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, published by Viking in November 2022. Gage is professor of 20th-century American history at Yale and in her previous book, The Day Wall Street Exploded (Oxford University Press, 2009), she examined the history of terrorism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Gage writes frequently for the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, among other publications. Gage was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

This week we interview Satvinder Juss, author of Bhagat Singh: A Life in Revolution, a biography of a charismatic Indian revolutionary, published by India Viking in December 2022. Juss serves as Professor of Law at King’s College, London; is a practicing Barrister-at-Law in London; and is a Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal in London and Birmingham, UK. He was a former Human Rights Fellow at Harvard Law School. Juss was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.  

This week we interview Rachel L. Swarns, a New York University Professor of Journalism and journalist who writes about race and race relations as a contributing author to The New York Times. Her latest book, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the Catholic Church, was published by Random House in May 2023. She also authored American Tapestry: The Story of the Black and White and Multicultural Ancestors of Michelle Obama and co-authored Unseen: Unpublished Black History from the New York Times Photo Archive. Swarns’s work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Leon Levy Center for Biography, Biographers International Organization, and other organizations. Swarns was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Eric K. Washington.

This week we interview Edward O’Shea, a State University of New York at Oswego Emeritus English Professor and author of Seamus Heaney’s American Odyssey. Published by Routledge Press in December 2022, this biography explores the 40 years that Irish poet Seamus Heaney spent in America. O’Shea has served as a Fulbright Fellow at Presidency College in Kolkata, India, and he was a Fulbright Specialist at Trinity College in Dublin. During that appointment, he made presentations at the Heaney “Listen Now Again” exhibition in Dublin, and at Trinity College, Queens University in Belfast. Edward O’Shea was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

This week we interview Mary Ann Caws, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature, English and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. In her latest book, Mina Loy: Apology of Genius, published by Reaktion Books in July 2022, Caws explores Loy’s flamboyant life and avant-garde artistry. Caws has authored several books, including The Modern Art Cookbook and Creative Gatherings: Meeting Places of Modernism, both published by Reaktion Books. Mary Ann Caws was intervened by BIO member Jenny Skoog.