A Life in Biography

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

14 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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

07 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 beco...

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

30 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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

A few more words about branding.

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This won’t take long.

Building Your Brand and Best Practices

09 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Advice you may not want to take.

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

19 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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.

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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

05 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 Revoluti...

The Existential Loneliness of the Long Distance Biographer

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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

14 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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

Biography in the Prison House of Modernism, Part 2

07 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I had fun with this one. I really let it rip, if I do say so myself.

A new Greta Garbo biography by Lois Banner, with new sources and insights

23 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Lois Banner, biographer of Marilyn Monroe, turns to Garbo, learns Swedish, and discovers all sorts of important sources not to be found in previous bi...

Mary Dearborn discusses her new biography of Carson McCullers

17 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mary Dearborn does a valiant job of dealing with my interruptions in our discussion of her splendid biography of Carson McCullers.

Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” and the Prison House Modernism

10 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

You might want to read Plath’s poem “Mirror” as I explain my reactions to it as a biographer.

Authors vanish after they die and are revived. A talk with the biographer of Carolyn Wells.

03 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How Rebecca Rego Barry discovered Carolyn Wells, and why she wrote a biography of a forgotten literary figure, and how she did it.

A rollicking interview with Paul Alexander about his new biography of Billie Holiday.

25 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Paul Alexander talks about his new state of the art biography of Billie Holiday. I listened and I learned.

My listeners respond

18 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

My listeners respond and I comment on their comments

Why Biography Doesn’t Belong

11 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A rambling meditation on the biographer as exile.

A talk with Marian Janssen, biographer of Carolyn Kizer, one of the wild women of American poetry

04 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A talk with the delightful Marian Janssen who describes her career as a biographer and why she chose to write about the American poet Carolyn Kizer.

How close is too close when it comes to the biography of your subject?

28 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I explain what happened when I became part of the lives of my two subjects while researching and writing To Be a Woman: The Life of Jill Craigie and A...

You’ve heard of Chaplin and Keaton, but Al Christie?—the subject of Mark Kearney’s new biography

21 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Al Christie: Hollywood’s Forgotten Film Pioneer by Mark Kearney. A wide ranging discussion of a pioneer Hollywood filmmaker, how to write his biogra...

Tim Christian discusses his audiobook version of Hemingway’s Widow

15 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How to do a biography as an audiobook

The author records his book: Tim Christian on Hemingway’s Widow

14 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tim Christian describes the process of doing an audiobook, with some very specific advice and technical specifications.

Biographer Ruth Laney discusses her decades of work on the life and world of Ernest J. Gaines

07 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Cherie Quarters: The Place and People That Inspire Ernest J. Gaines: biography, memoir, history, and an evocation of the material world out of which a...

Whose biography is it, anyway? My answer to Joyce Carol Oates

24 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A brief podcast, what you might call a short snort, about those who malign biography.

Honey Traps! Why spies make good if spooky biographical subjects.

17 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A talk with Henry Schlesinger about his book on Honey Traps and the biographies of alluring spies.

A slightly trimmed version of my talk with Chris Wallace about biographers and political lives

11 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when the biographer becomes part of the story? Chris Wallace shows us in her unique book, Political Lives.

A conversation with Chris Wallace about her book Political Lives and how biographers get the story

10 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A discussion of a unique book by Chris Wallace, a journalist turned scholar, and how biographers interact with their subjects.

Come On! Get Happy! How Summer Stock with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly got made

03 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Join David Fantle and Tom Johnson for a lively discussion of the backstory and performances and production of the MGM musical, Summer Stock

Danny Fingeroth’s new biography of Jack Ruby

22 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How to deal with a figure so involved with conspiracy theories: What does a biography have to add to history?

Listening to Larry Lockridge, Part 2, biographer turned novelist

13 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when a biographer turns from the themes of his biography to a series of novels that are biographical and then some.

What happened when T. S. Matthews decided to write the first biography of T. S. Eliot? Find out!

12 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A conversation with Karen Christensen about her edition of Writing The Great Tom as well as her own work on a biography of Valerie Eliot.

The role of place and the place of the biographer’s biography in biography

11 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An example from my Lillian Hellman biography.

Larry Lockridge discusses his biography of his father Ross Lockridge and his novel Raintree County

06 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to a fascinating discussion of how biographers deal with success and suicide and what happens when you discover details that fundamentally alte...

Talking with Dan Van Neste about Warner Baxter, the “accidental star”

05 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why is it that some important actors are remembered and not others? Find out by listening to this discussion about Dan Van Neste’s biography of Warn...

The Warner Brothers: How They Became That Way

29 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Movie making in Hollywood’s heyday, but also much that applies to today, to Netflix, Amazon, and the world of streaming

Paula Broussard and Lisa Royére discuss Eleanor Powell: Born to Dance

22 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Two biographers who befriended their subject and lived to tell an inspiring tale of a life well lived and a biography well written.

Eric Laursen talks about his biography of Alex Comfort & The Joy of Sex

15 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sexologist, gerontologist, novelist, poet, anarchist—just some of the work that Alex Comfort accomplished, the subject of a brilliant new biography....

Sylvia Plath Day by Day, volume 1: Why did I do it. What’s in it?

12 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A podcast that reflects on how I got started on studying Sylvia Plath and why I’ve written so many books about her.

A new biography of Betty Friedan and why it matters.

01 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rachel Shteir takes us inside of making of her Jewish Lives biography of the author of The Feminine Mystique

An Emergency Podcast: What To Do When You Don’t Have Primary Sources

27 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

My response to an email asking me for help

A preview of coming attractions and of my work in progress on presidential biography

24 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Forthcoming podcasts on new biographies of Betty Friedan, Warner Baxter, Alex Comfort, Eleanor Powell, Jack Ruby, T. S. Eliot and my working in progre...

FDR Unmasked: What the Biographers Missed

17 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

My conversation with neurologist Steven Lomazow about his revelatory book about FDR and the impact of his health on biographies of Roosevelt

Fair Use Biography

27 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Just remember: You are the one in charge of fair use. Don’t give your rights away.

Finding Ursula Parrott: One biographer’s quest.

16 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

My talk with Marsha Gordon about her sensational new biography of an important writer you probably have never heard of.

The Different Discourses of Biographers and Subjects

09 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Knowing your subject may mean knowing his or her discourse, and the same can be said of reading biographies when considering the voices of biographer ...

The Way I Work

02 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How I go about each day as a biographer, the sources I use, as I assemble my own archive and write my biography—in this case the one I’m working o...

What It Takes To Do Biography

25 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Find out

Gabriella Kelly-Davies on writing biographies of scientists and doctors and much more

10 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A wide ranging discussion of how to write about science and medicine in a biographical narrative, with some talk of other biographers including Kai Bi...

What memory tells us about biography and doesn’t.

03 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A continuation of the previous podcast about the variables in understanding a writer and his world.

The nature of literary power, who holds it, and how the biographer should understand it.

03 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Samuel R. Delany presents the writer as biographical subject and what it is the biographer needs to know about literary world and how reputations are ...

The Power of the Living Biographical Subject v The Power of the Biographer

23 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to be powerful in the literary world, and in what sense should the biographer take it seriously?

Dylan Thomas and why biography matters, with a cameo performance by Marilyn Monroe

14 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The correspondence with Samuel R. Delany continues, with many digressions, but all of them pertaining to biography and the work it can accomplish

Why a biographer would go ahead when the subject is fiercely resistant

07 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Sontag saga continues

Samuel R. Delany refuses to give up on Susan Sontag’s biographers

30 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The seventh part of what is turning out to be a saga—listened to its entirety it amounts to a class on biography that you can take for free.

Seamus Heaney in America with biographer Ed O’Shea

30 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A talk about Ed O’Shea’s recent book and what matters about Seamus Heaney’s experience in America

What Does It Mean to Know a Biographical Subject

23 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An intervention by the New York Times and the story of a club of unauthorized biographers

Round 5 of The Biographer and His Critic

15 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

I continue the debate with Samuel R. Delany, reading from our correspondence and talking about it. In this episode, Sontag has her say.

Round 4: The Biographer and His Critic

08 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Samuel R. Delany continues to point out the error of my ways, and I respond with my own letters and commentary.

The Biographer and His Critic: Round 3

01 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

I continue to read and comment on my correspondence with Samuel R. Delany concerning the proper behavior of a biographer.

A Collector’s Item: A Dialogue About Biography

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The correspondence of Carl Rollyson and Samuel R. Delany, a latter day version of Oscar’s Wilde’s The Critic as Artist, in the form reminiscent of...

The Ethics of Biography and a Confession

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The ethics of biography apply not only to the biographer but also to those who choose to cooperate with a biographer and those who do not.

Finding Jackie: A conversation with Oline Eaton about her new biography

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Pay attention to the subtitle of Finding Jackie: A Life Reinvented. How Oline Eaton deals with the making and unmaking and making of a fascinating lif...

Remembering a great friend & biographer with Mary Dearborn, Diana Jacobs, Sydney Stern, Amanda Vaill

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We celebrate the late Marion Meade, novelist and biographer of Dorothy Parker, Buster Keaton, Woody Allen, and others by her fellow biographers and fr...

The tables are turned: Author and publisher Karen Christensen interviews me!

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Some penetrating questions and comments on my practice as a biography in an interview with Karen Christensen

Dealing with sources, people and archive, the good,, the bad, and the ugly, with Doug Munro

29 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

My resident Pacific Islands historian/biographer, Doug Munro,, discusses the successes and failures with sources, in the archives and in person, and I...

The History Wars! In Australia, but it happens here too. Biographers Beware

22 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Part 2 of a conversation with Pacific Islands historian/biographer, Doug Munro, about the cross overs between history and biography, and on the polari...

A new biography of William Faulkner’s great-grandfather, avatar and precursor

14 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Historical archeologist Jack Elliott explains why we need a new biography of Faulkner’s great-grandfather. Listen to an authentic Mississippi voice!...

Doug Munro on Biography and History: Where They Meet and Deviate

08 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A conversation about why history was not enough for Doug Munro, and why he turned to biography, which is also quite not enough

Choosing My Subjects: A Fireside Chat

31 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A year end podcast reflecting on the contingencies of biography.

Two Mailer biographers discuss why he still matters, and why they write about him.

18 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

My conversation with J. Michael Lennon, Mailer biographer and interlocutor reflecting on a lifetime with his subject.

Mahala Stripling on her biography of Richard Selzer, the doctor who made an art of medicine

10 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Selzer inspired the work of a generation of doctor/writers. Listen to how he did it, and how his biography is shaping up.

A talk with Bob Batchelor about his new biography of Jim Morrison, The Doors, and the Sixties

27 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A wide-ranging conversation about what you might call the music of biography.

A conversation with Norman Lock about Voices in the Dead House, novels, biography, and much more

19 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

I talk with Norman Lock about his American novel series, and why it should matter to biographers. This is my longest, most searching podcast.

Ellen Brown talks about her work in progress, a biography of Tennessee Williams

13 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Tennessee Williams, copyright, fair use, research—Ellen Brown covers it all

Biography By the Day

05 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What it is like trying to capture a day by day account of William Faulkner’s life.

How Diane Diekman became a biographer and her work in progress on Randy Travis

29 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How a biographer begins with nothing—no contacts, no track record—and is successful anyway, writing biographies of Faron Young and Marty Robbins. ...

Becoming You

22 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Are you the same person you were when you were a child? How this question pertains to biography—the one you are writing and mine.

How James Meredith broke the segregation barrier at Ole Miss

08 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A conversation with Kathleen Wickham about her book, James Meredith: Breaking the Barrier” and her other work dealing with journalists who covered t...

Allison Gilbert & Julia Scheeres: Listen, World! Their biography of the intrepid Elsie Robinson

01 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Elsie Robinson had 20 millions readers but no archive. How two biographers set about reconstructing her life.

Work in Progress: A Biography of Marilyn Chambers

24 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The first biography of the adult film star and how a biographer goes about the research, finding an agent and publisher.

A conversation to Jerry Muller about Jacob Taubes, the Professor of Apocalypse

19 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We range over the many places and people of an erotic and intellectual life spanning Europe, the U.S., and Israel with Susan Sontag, Gershom Scholem, ...

A talk with Beverly Gray about Roger Corman, Ron Howard, and what it takes to do a biography

10 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How do you become a biographer? Hear one story about it and Beverly Gray’s adventures with Roger Corman and Ron Howard

A Biography of Jack Ruby, you say?

03 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to Danny Fingeroth speak from an undisclosed location about his work in progress.

Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and the Biographical Quest

20 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

LIsten to Aaron Sachs talk about his new book, Up From the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times. I call it a palimpse...

A talk about Jackie Ronne, polar explorer with her accomplished biographer, Joanna Kafarowski

06 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How history gets rewritten in biographies of women

Why another biography of Ernest Hemingway?

30 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A talk with Wylie McLallen about Hemingway and the rise of modern literature, publishers of biography, and much else.

Coming attractions

24 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Polar exploration and Warren Harding as explained from an Amtrak platform in Charleston, West Virginia

A conversation with Jim Dougherty about his wife’s great biography of Nazi Reinhard Heydrich

09 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

85 year old Jim Dougherty’s compelling saga about a great biography that was almost not published.

A conversation with Andrew Wilson about Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath, Patricia Highsmith & more

02 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Biographer Andrew Wilson talks about his work in fiction and fact, biographies and novels.

A Biography in Progress: Beth Phillips discusses Clifford Odets and why his work and life matter

26 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What it takes for a biographer to do justice to a major American playwright

The Biography I did not write

18 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It is probably just as well

To quote Robert Caro: “Turn Ever Page”

11 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The history of publishing Plath’s letters and why it matters to biography

A talk with Alison Macor about her new book, The Making of The Best Years of Our Lives

04 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A lesson here for how to write group biography as well the history of an epic film.

War, trauma, and art in the life of Rudolf H. Sauter, and the process of biography

28 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A wide ranging discussion of an artist interned during World War I and what he made of his life and art coming out of that trauma.

A Faulknerian novel in which Faulkner appears

21 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when a novelist reads, writes like his subject, and puts that subject in a novel?

The Gatekeepers

12 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

You know what I mean, don’t you?

A conversation with Michelle Morgan one of the masters of Marilyn Monroe biography

07 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We delve deeply into a kind of time capsule of 1956, when Marilyn met the Queen and so much else

A conversation with David O. Stewart about the worlds of biography and fiction

30 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The overlapping worlds of biography and fiction and how they are inter-dependent

A talk with master biographer, Nigel Hamilton.

23 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

About the making of a biographer and what keeps him at it.