Biographers International Organization

This week we interview Betsy Smoot, an intelligence historian interested in early twentieth-century cryptology and communications. She retired from the Center for Cryptologic History of the National Security Agency in 2017, and she has published articles in Cryptologia and Intelligence and National Security.  Her book, Parker Hitt: The Father of American Military Crytology, was published by the University Press of Kentucky in March 2022. Betsy Smoot was interviewed by fellow BIO member Jennifer Skoog.

This week we interview Gwendolyn Mink and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, co-authors of Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress, published by New York University Press in May 2022. This book explores the life and accomplishments of Patsy Mink, the first Asian American woman elected to U.S. House of Representatives, and a dedicated advocate for Title IX legislation and opposition to the Vietnam War. Gwendolyn Mink, Patsy Mink daughter’s, has authored and edited several scholarly books and served as Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Smith College. Co-author Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is Professor of Asian American Studies and the Director of the Humanities Center at the University of California, Irvine. She also is the author of Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The Life of a Wartime Celebrity and Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era. Mink and Wu were interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley. 

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu

Gwendolyn Mink

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This week we interview Toluse Olorunnipa and Robert Samuels, Peabody Award and Polk Award-winning journalists and co-authors of His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, published by Viking Press in May 2022. Toluse Olorunnipa is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the Post in 2019 and previously covered the White House. Before that, Olorunnipa spent five years at Bloomberg, where he reported on politics and policy from Washington and Florida. Robert Samuels is a national political enterprise reporter for The Washington Post who focuses on the intersection of politics, policy, and people. He previously wrote stories about life in the District for the Post’s social issues team. Samuels joined the Post in 2011 after spending nearly five years working at the Miami Herald. Olorunnipa and Samuels were interviewed by BIO member Jennifer Skoog. 

Bloomberg News Reporter Touluse Olorunipa photographed at Bloomberg’s Washington DC news bureau on June 27, 2017. Photographer: Lori Hoffman for Bloomberg.

Robert Samuels

This week we interview Philip Short, a British journalist who has written several definitive biographies, including Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare. Short has had a long career as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington, D.C., working for the BBC, the Economist, and the Times of London. Short’s latest biography is, Putin, published by Henry Holt & Company in July 2022. It examines the life of Russia’s controversial President Vladimir Putin. Philip Short was interviewed via Zoom by fellow journalist and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell. 

Photo credit: Bob Swaim

This week we interview award winning writer Mark Lee Gardner. His latest biography, The Earth is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation, was published by Mariner Books in June 2022.Gardner’s previous books, Rough Riders, To Hell on a Fast Horse and Shot All to Hell, received multiple honors, including a Spur Award from Western Writers of America. An authority on the American West, Gardner has appeared on PBS’s American Experience, the History and the Travel Channels, AMC and NPR. He has written for National Geographic History, American Heritage, the Los Angeles Times, True West, and American Cowboy. Mark Gardner was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

This week we interview Paulina L. Alberto, an Argentine-born historian of Afro-Latin America and Professor of History, Spanish, and Portuguese at the University of Michigan. Her biography, Black Legend: The Many Lives of Raúl Grigera and the Power of Racial Storytelling in Modern Argentina, was published by Cambridge University Press in January 2022. As the author of Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Brazil, she received the Roberto Reis Prize for Best Book in Brazilian Studies and the Warren Dean Prize for Best Book in Brazilian History, along with the James Alexander Robertson Prize for best article in the Hispanic American Historical Review.  Paulina Alberto was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

This week we interview award-winning author and Brigham Young University music professor Brian Harker. His latest biography, Sportin’ Life: John W. Bubbles an American Classic, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2022. John Bubbles was one of the jazz world’s most singular and elusive architects. Harker also explored jazz music in his previous books, Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings and Jazz: An American Journey. Brian Harker was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member and Eric K. Washington.

This week we interview Kathleen Stone, a Boston-based lawyer whose reviews, essays and have appeared in MS Magazine, Arts Fuse, Ploughshares, Pangyrus, The Timberline Review, Los Angeles Review of Books and Grist. She also co-hosts Booklab, a literary salon in Boston. Stone’s biography, her first, explores the lives of seven remarkable women from a wide range of backgrounds. They Called Us Girls: Stories of Female Ambition from Suffrage to Mad Men, was published in March 2022 by Cynren Press. She was interviewed during an online Zoom session in February of this year by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

This week we offer the second part of two special episodes featuring David Maraniss, the veteran journalist and author of 13 highly regarded books. His latest book, Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, will be published by Simon and Schuster in August 2022. Maraniss is a New York Times bestselling author, associate editor at The Washington Post and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. In addition, his reporting and writing has earned him such honors as the George Polk Award, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Frankfurt eBook Award. David Maraniss was interviewed on October 13, 2021, via an online Zoom session, by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.