Biographers International Organization

This week we interview biographer and historian, Debby Applegate. Her first book, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. This book also was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, NPR’s Fresh Air, the Washington Post, Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and American Heritage Magazine. Her current book, Madam: A Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age, was published by Doubleday in November 2021. Debby Applegate was interviewed online, via Zoom, on October 29, 2021 by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

Happy New Year! This week we interview Gary Ginsberg, author of The New York Times bestseller, First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (and Unelected) People Who Shaped Out Presidents, published by Twelve in July 2021. The book explores nine select American presidents (Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton) and the relationships they had with their best friends. A lawyer by training, Ginsberg worked for the Clinton administration, served as a senior editor and counsel at the political magazine, George, and held executive positions at the News Corporation, Time Warner and SoftBank. He has published pieces in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and he was as an on-air political contributor during the early days of MSNBC. Gary Ginsberg was interviewed online, via Zoom, on October 12, 2021 by fellow biographer and BIO member Kitty Kelley.

This week we offer the next episode in a special mini-series featuring highlights from panel discussions conducted during BIO’s first virtual annual conference, held May 14-16, 2021. The session, Writing the First Biography of Your Subject, featured biographers Justin Gifford (Revolution or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver), Abigail Santamaria (Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis) and Carol Sklenicka (Alice Adams: Portrait of a Writer). The panel was moderated by author and BIO member Debby Applegate (Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age).