A Life in Biography

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**A Life in Biography**

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 Monroe to Susan Sontag, and much more.

Latest Episodes:

Episode 48: A discussion with Sydney Stern about her book, The Brothers Mankiewicz Feb 27, 2021

Show notes

What it takes to write a biography of the Mankiewicz brothers and other issues biographers encounter.

Episode 47: Justice to Charmian London, a writer who was much more than Jack London’s wife Feb 20, 2021

Show notes

A wide ranging discussion of Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s new biography, including reflections on the biographer as villain and how biography can be an act of restitution.

Episode 46: How I Became A Biographer: A conversation with Richard Bradford Feb 13, 2021

Show notes

I speak with Richard Bradford about how he became a biographer, the role biography should play in literary study, and why he chose to write about Ernest Hemingway, Patricia Highsmith and others.

Episode 45: William Faulkner’s Civil War, a talk with Michael Gorra about his new book Feb 06, 2021

Show notes

All things biographical and how Faulkner, the man and the writer, approached the Civil War.

Episode 44: The Past Is Never Dead Jan 31, 2021

Show notes

How does a biographer recreate the past the milieu of a subject’s life. I draw on my own experience in biographies of William Faulkner, Lillian Hellman, Rebecca West, Michael Foot, and others.

Episode 43: Talking with William Souder about Mad at the World, his new biography of John Steinbeck Jan 23, 2021

Show notes

William Souder explains his attraction to Steinbeck, what it takes to do a biography, the audience you can expect to reach as a biographer, and much much more.

Episode 42: Talking Faulkner biography with Larry Wells, author of the memoir, In Faulkner’s Shadow Jan 17, 2021

Show notes

A wide ranging discussion of Larry Wells’s memories of the Faulkner family, of Faulkner biographers, Joseph Blotner and Carvel Collins, and what it takes to research and write biography, which often feels like a Henry James story.

Episode 41: Heather Clark on her new Plath Biography. Jan 09, 2021

Show notes

We talk about how Heather Clark became interested in Plath, how she came to write the biography, how biography is a product of its age, and much more.

Episode 40: John Bryant on his new multi-volume Melville biography Jan 02, 2021

Show notes

A wide-ranging discussion of biography, how to work on literary figures Melville’s “black consciousness” and much more.

Part 3 of my interview with Alexis Coe Dec 29, 2020

Show notes

Slavery, capitalism, what went into the making of Washington’s life and those of his contemporaries—plus Alexis Coe puts THE BIG QUESTION to me.