Biographers International Organization

Photo credit: Jessica Scranton

Photo credit: Leslie Terzian Markoff

This week we interview Alejandro Madrid, an award-winning Cornell University musicologist who specializes in music and expressive culture from Latin America and Latinxs in the United States. He has authored more than a half dozen books, including his latest, Tania Léon’s Stride. A Polyrhythmic Life, published by the University of Illinois Press in December 2021. Tania Léon, now in her late 70s, is a sought-after composer, conductor, educator, and tireless advocate for the arts. Last year she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her composition, Stride, Léon’s orchestral tribute to the 19th Amendment that granted women the right to vote. Alejandro Madrid was interviewed, online via Zoom on February 9, 2022, by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

This week we interview Paulina Bren, an award-winning writer and Vassar College historian. Her latest book, The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free is a New York Times Editor’s Choice. The Barbizon has received international press coverage and it has been optioned by HBO and Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke. Foreign rights have been sold to Italy, Spain, Hungary, South America, China, Russia and South Korea. Paulina Bren is a well-known scholar of everyday life and communism behind the Iron Curtain, starting with her groundbreaking book, The Greengrocer and His TV. For this BIO episode, Paulina Bren was interviewed online, via Zoom, on November 5, 2021 by BIO member Kitty Kelley.

This week we interview Sheena Harris, a Woodburn Associate Professor of history and coordinator of the Africana Studies Program at West Virginia University. Previously, she served as an Associate Professor of history and the Inaugural Director of Student Engagement Initiatives at Tuskegee University. She is a first-time biographer and author of Margaret Murray Washington: The Life and Times of a Career Clubwoman, published by the University of Tennessee Press in February 2021. A powerful leader in the Black women’s club movement, Margaret Murray Washington was the wife of legendary educator and Tuskegee University founder, Booker T. Washington. Sheena Harris was interviewed on January 21, 2022, via an online Zoom session, by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.

This week we interview Tyrone McKinley Freeman, an award-winning associate professor of Philanthropic Studies and director of undergraduate programs at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. His latest book, Madam C.J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving: Black Women’s Philanthropy During Jim Crow, was published by the University of Illinois Press in September 2020. His work has appeared or been cited in the New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, TIME, Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, News One, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, CASE Currents, and Advancing Philanthropy. Tyrone McKinley Freeman was interviewed online, via Zoom, on November 22, 2021, by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.