Biographers International Organization (BIO) is a non-profit organization founded to promote the art and craft of biography, and to further the professional interests of its practitioners.

History

BIO was granted its corporate charter on May 26, 2010. It is designated as a 501 (c) 6.

BIO grew from the vision James McGrath Morris, creator and editor of The Biographer’s Craft newsletter. In July 2008, Morris wrote an open letter to biographers and from that a grass-roots organization of practicing and apprentice biographers began to emerge. Eight months later, on March 26, 2009, the first formal organizing meeting took place in a classroom at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at CUNY, and a temporary 15-member founding committee was formed to function as an Interim Board of Directors.

In February 2010, the Interim Board announced the formation of an Advisory Council composed of leading and noted biographers including Deirdre Bair

Deirdre Bair

Deirdre Bair is the critically acclaimed author of five works of nonfiction. She received the National Book Award for Samuel Beckett: A Biography. Her biographies of Simone de Beauvoir and C. G. Jung were finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize...

, Douglas Brinkley

Douglas Brinkley

Douglas Brinkley is an American author, professor of history at Rice University and a fellow at the James Baker Institute for Public Policy. Brinkley is the history commentator for CBS News and a contributing editor to the magazine Vanity Fair...

, Robert Caro

Robert Caro

Robert Allan Caro is an American journalist and author known for his celebrated biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson...

, Joan Hedrick, Justin Kaplan

Justin Kaplan

Justin Kaplan is an American writer and editor.Kaplan received his bachelor of science degree from Harvard University in 1945...

, Eric Lax

Eric Lax

Eric Lax is an American biographer and author of On Being Funny: Woody Allen and Comedy as well as several other books and articles.He graduated from Hobart College in 1966 with a major in English. Upon graduating he joined the Peace Corps serving in Chuuk and the Caroline Islands in the western...

, David Levering Lewis

David Levering Lewis

David Levering Lewis is the Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History at New York University. He is twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, for part one and part two of his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois...

, Andrew Lownie, John Matteson

John Matteson

John Matteson is a full professor of English and legal writing at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for his first book, Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father.Matteson is the son of Thomas D...

, William S. McFeely

William S. McFeely

William S. McFeely was a professor of history before his retirement in 1997.He received his B.A. from Amherst College in 1952, and Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1966. He studied there with, among others, C. Vann Woodward, whose book "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" was a staple...

, Jon Meacham

Jon Meacham

Jon Meacham is executive editor and executive vice president at Random House. A former editor of Newsweek and a Pulitzer Prize winning bestselling author and a commentator on politics, history, and religious faith in America, he is a contributing editor to Time magazine and editor-at-large of WNET...

, Marion Meade

Marion Meade

Marion Meade is an American biographer and novelist, whose subjects stretch from 12th century French royalty to 20th century stand-up comedians. She is best known for her portraits of literary figures and iconic filmmakers....

, Nancy Milford

Nancy Milford

Nancy Milford is an American biographer.Milford is best known for her book Zelda about F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda Fitzgerald. The book started out as her master's thesis and was published to broad acclaim in 1970...

, Susan Ronald, Stacy Schiff

Stacy Schiff

Stacy Madeleine Schiff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American nonfiction author and guest columnist for The New York Times.-Biography:...

, Martin J. Sherwin

Martin J. Sherwin

Martin J. Sherwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian. His scholarship mostly concerns the history of the development of atomic energy and nuclear proliferation....

, Kenneth Silverman

Kenneth Silverman

Kenneth Silverman is a professor emeritus at New York University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. Silverman was born in Manhattan in 1936.-Books:* The Life and Times of Cotton Mather New York : Harper & Row, 1984...

, William Taubman

William Taubman

William Chase Taubman is an American political scientist. His biography of Nikita Khrushchev won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2004 and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in 2003....

, Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is a critic, biographer and blogger. He is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, the chief culture critic of Commentary, and the author of "Sightings," a column about the arts in America that appears biweekly in the Friday Wall Street Journal...

.

As of July 2011, Bio has members in 43 American states and 10 nations, including Australia, India, Kenya, and the Netherlands.

Leadership

At the first Compleat Biographer Conference in Boston on May 15, 2010, Nigel Hamilton

Nigel Hamilton (author)

Nigel Hamilton is an award-winning British-born biographer, academic and broadcaster, whose works have been translated into sixteen languages. In the United States he is known primarily for his best-selling work on the young John F. Kennedy, JFK: Reckless Youth, which was made into an ABC...

 was chosen to assume the presidency, succeeding Debby Applegate

Debby Applegate

Debby Applegate is an American historian and biographer. She is the author of The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.-Biography:...

, who had served as interim president. Charles J. Shields was elected vice president, and eleven others were selected to serve one- to two-year terms on the board: Carol DeBoer-Langworthy, Gayle Feldman, Anne Heller, Kitty Kelley, Andrew Lownie, Paul Maher Jr.

Paul Maher, Jr.

Paul Maher, Jr. is an author, book critic, photographer and filmmaker best known for his published books about Jack Kerouac.-Biography:Paul Maher Jr. was born on December 6, 1963, in Amarillo, Texas, where his father was stationed in the Air Force. Shortly afterwards the family moved to Lowell,...

, Hans Renders, Carl Rollyson, Stacy Schiff, Will Swift, and Steve Weinberg. In its first actions, the board selected James McGrath Morris to serve as executive director.

Mission

In 2011, addressing the second annual In 2011, addressing the second annual Complete Biographer Conference in Washington, DC, Bio President Nigel Hamilton wrote: "Biography faces many challenges today, from a reduced attention span and ever-growing celebrity worship among readers to an obsession with self rather than others…. By confronting these challenges together, rather than singly, we can ensure the survival of biography as seriously researched, articulately composed, and well- produced work chronicling the lives of real individuals: a craft that has been in existence since Greek and Roman times. This is our commitment, then, each and every one of us: to make a unique contribution to human knowledge and understanding through our work."

Notable Members

•Debby Applegate (2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher)

•Robert Caro (2002 National Book Award, 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson)

•Doris Kearns Goodwin (1995 Pulitzer Prize for History for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II)

•Nigel Hamilton (Whitbread Award for Biography, Templar Medal for Military History for Monty, official three-volume biography of Field Marshall Montgomery)

•Justin Kaplan (1967 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, National Book Award for Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain; 1981 National Book Award for Walt Whitman)

•Stacy Schiff (2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, for Vera: Mrs. Vladimer Nabakov)

•T. J. Stiles (2009 National Book Award and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt)

•Jean Strouse (Bancroft Prize for Alice James: A Biography)