A Life in Biography

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

Arts
**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:

Fair Use Biography: Forget about the Don’ts in Most Cases. Just go ahead. Jun 21, 2020

Show notes

My account for forty years of dealing with fair use, biographical subjects, and publishers.

The Whys and Wherefores of Documentary Biography Jun 14, 2020

Show notes

How dating all the days of a life provide a different way of approaching what is left out in other biographies.

Episode 9: How To Begin a Biography: The Case of William Faulkner Jun 06, 2020

Show notes

I look at how biographers have begun their biographies and the merits of different kinds of openings and why biography has been called factitious.

Episode 8: How to End a Biography, The Case of Sylvia Plath May 30, 2020

Show notes

I read from the last paragraphs of Plath biographies, commenting on them, and explain my own choices in writing American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath.

Episode 7: Prefaces to Biography May 24, 2020

Show notes

Who is the biographer? And why does it matter?

Building a Better Biography: How to Capture the Whole Man May 16, 2020

Show notes

I give a sense of the interplay between Faulkner the man, his fiction, and his film writing.

Sylvia Plath, Meet Rebecca West May 10, 2020

Show notes

I explore why it is that Sylvia Plath never seemed to be aware of Rebecca West, a world class writer, who still has so much to say to the readers of Plath and of modern literature.

A Tale of Two Biographies: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath and The Life of William Faulkner May 02, 2020

Show notes

Why I wrote these two books and what in the world Plath and Faulkner have to do with the world around us.

Episode 3: Faulkner Preludes Apr 25, 2020

Show notes

How I began my work on Faulkner; what I mean by an intertextual biography; why Joan Crawford matters in a Faulkner biography; Faulkner as diplomat; what Faulkner to read first.

A Life in Biography: Episode 2: Why Care About William Faulkner? Apr 17, 2020

Show notes

A two-minute podcast. Call it “The Elevator Pitch.”

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected