A Life in Biography

Jul 14 2024 221 ep. 43 mins 22

A Life in Biography Podcast artwork

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.

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Emily. Van Duyne discusses her new, ground breaking book, Loving Sylvia Plath

Jul 14 2024 51 mins

You think you know the Plath story? Ah, but who gets to tell it, and why do they do so, and how does someone like Ted Hughes commandeer the narrative?

Ghostwriter, biographer, novelist, Shakespeare, Faulkner—we cover it all in Lawrence Wells’s work

Jul 07 2024 34 mins

What happens when a writer is hired to do a biographical novel seeking to prove Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, and how years later, the project becomes two books of nonfiction and fiction

Marcia Biederman on her fascinating book about abortion in 19th C. New England

Jun 30 2024 35 mins

Marcia Biderman writes biography like a mystery story. There is much to learn from her.

A few more words about branding.

Jun 12 2024 11 mins

This won’t take long.

Building Your Brand and Best Practices

Jun 09 2024 35 mins

Advice you may not want to take.

Robert Hamblin discusses his new book, a kind of biography of William Faulkner in verse

May 19 2024 40 mins

An important Faulkner critic and biographer introduces us to new way of understanding Faulkner, his fiction, and his life

I have reloaded the episode with Roger Lewis talking about his Taylor-Burton biography.

May 13 2024 38 mins

A loading issue made me repost this exciting talk with Roger Lewis.

A talk with Jared Stearns about his new biography of Marilyn Chambers and the world of hardcore

May 05 2024 47 mins

How does a biographer deal with the world of pornography and so-called porn stars. Jared Stearns knows how in his biography, Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers.

The Existential Loneliness of the Long Distance Biographer

Apr 22 2024 69 mins

This podcast is not as pretentious or self-pitying as you might suppose.

Malcolm W. Browne reporting from Vietnam and other biographical matters with Ray Boomhower

Apr 14 2024 41 mins

Ray Boomhower talks about what it is like to be a journalist in Vietnam and about what it is like writing biographies of journalists.