2025 Annual Conference
List of Panelists

is the recipient of an NEH Public Scholar Award, the Robert & Ina Caro Award from BIO, and a visiting fellowship from the New York Public Library to support her group biography of women artists working for the WPA, forthcoming with St Martin’s Press. She is the author of two previous group biographies, The Poets of Rapallo (Oxford, 2021) and Revolutionary Lives (Princeton, 2016). She is chair and professor of English at the University of South Florida. 

won a Pulitzer Prize for her journalism at Tropic Magazine of the Miami Herald. She is a professor emerita in the Journalism Department at the University of Massachusetts and the author of The Heart Is an Instrument (a collection of essays), In These Girls Hope Is a Muscle (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award in nonfiction), Uphill Walkers: Memoir of a Family, To the New Owners: A Martha’s Vineyard Memoir, and Queen of the Court: The Many Lives of Tennis Legend Alice Marble. Her current project is set in Miami in the 1980s.

is the author of Baldwin: A Love Story, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in August 2025. He rediscovered and co-edited Baldwin’s collaboration with French artist Yoran Cazac, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood (2018).

is the author of Martin Van Buren: America’s First Politician, published by Oxford University Press. He is also the co-editor of the Martin Van Buren Papers and the editor of the forthcoming Selected Papers of Martin Van Buren. Bradley also teaches documentary editing in the public history program at the State University of New York at Albany and was the senior project editor of The Encyclopedia of New York City.

is the author of Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson. Serving Herself has received the Shapiro Book Prize from the Huntington Library’s Shapiro Center for American History and Culture, the Association of Black Women Historians’ Letitia Woods Brown Book Prize, the Popular Culture Association’s Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award, and the United States Golf Association’s Herbert Warren Wind Book Award. Brown is an associate professor and the Allan H. Selig Chair in the History of Sport and Society at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where, among many other courses, she teaches Biography in U.S. Sports History.

is the author of Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, the first major biography of her great-grandmother, and of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, a New York Times Notable Book about her entrepreneurial great-great-grandmother. She is the founder of the Madam Walker Family Archives, serves on several nonprofit boards, including Columbia Global Reports and the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and is a former ABC News executive, and Emmy Award-winning NBC News producer.

is professor emerita of English at the University of Illinois Springfield and author of William Maxwell: A Literary Life (University of Illinois Press, 2005), which plumbs Maxwell’s highly autobiographical fiction and his long career as fiction editor at The New Yorker. Burkhardt is also the editor of Conversations With William Maxwell (University Press of Mississippi, 2012, 2024). She is currently working on a biography of American author, singer, humorist, and radio personality Garrison Keillor.

is a presidential historian and executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Her latest book, Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic, was published in September 2024 by Oxford University Press. Chervinsky also authored the award-winning book The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution and co-edited Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture. She has written for media outlets including The Washington Post, Time, CNN.com, and The Wall Street Journal, and starred in many podcasts, appearing often on “Listening to America” with Clay Jenkinson. 

is the author of the forthcoming The Race Makers – a group biography moving from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson. Previous books include Who Is Black and Why?, co-authored with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Anatomy of Blackness, and Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely, named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews and other outlets. He has also written for The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Guardian, Time, and The Paris Review. Curran is a fellow at the New York Academy of Medicine and the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan. His next project, entitled Good Beyond Belief, is a group biography on the history of atheism written in collaboration with Dennis C. Rasmussen.

began her career in journalism and in 1988 began writing for The Washington Post, where she continued working until she began studying economic history at Harvard University. Downey won awards for her coverage of the aftermath of the savings-and-loan debacle, and she was among Washington Post staff members who received a Pulitzer Prize. Her biography of Frances Perkins, The Woman Behind the New Deal, was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2009 by the Library of Congress, the ALA, and NPR.  Her next book, Isabella, received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews.

is the author of Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, which won a NEH Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award.  For Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, she received a NEH Public Scholars grant and the inaugural Robert and Ina Caro Travel Fellowship from BIO. Chasing Beauty won this year’s Marfield Prize, the national award for arts writing.  She was a co-organizer of the inaugural 2023 Biography Lab and is an emerita professor of English at Hope College. She lives near Boston.

is the author of Richard Nixon: The Life, which won the PEN America award for the best biography and the New-York Historical Society book prize for the best volume of American history of 2017. It was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His 2022 book, Ted Kennedy: A Life, made the top 10 list of finalists for the National Book Award. Farrell is a University of Virginia graduate and has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. In 2001 he published Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century, which won the Hardeman prize for the best book on Congress. His book Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned won the Los Angeles Times book award for best biography of 2012.

is a biographer and cultural historian. His 2023 book, Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald’s Assassin (Chicago Review Press), examines this bizarre figure who changed history with his 1963 murder of the accused JFK assassin on live TV. Fingeroth’s 2019 biography A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee (St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan), looks closely at the controversial co-creator of Marvel Comics. Fingeroth has served as executive editor at Marvel and other companies, spoken and taught at venues including the Smithsonian, Columbia University, and the Bob Dylan Conference, and appeared on NBC’s Today Show and NPR’s All Things Considered. 

is an award-winning author, professor, and journalist. He has written 10 acclaimed books, winning the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism for his most recent, Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights. His previous books have been finalists for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and have received the New York Public Library Helen M. Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism and the National Jewish Book Award. As a professor at Columbia Journalism School, Freedman has been named the nation’s Outstanding Journalism Educator by Sigma Delta Chi. His course in book-writing has produced more than 110 authors, editors, and agents.

is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and a contributor to The New York Times. She is the author and co-author of numerous books, including Listen, World!, the first biography of Hearst newspaper columnist Elsie Robinson, winner of the 2023 Northern California Book Award. Gilbert’s essay for CNN about the reporting obstacles she overcame uncovering Robinson’s life story won the 2024 New York Press Club’s Journalism Award for Best Opinion Writing. She is co-author with Dr. Ruth Westheimer of The Joy of Connections: 100 Ways to Beat Loneliness and Live a Happier and More Meaningful Life, released two months after the American icon passed away.

2021 recipient of an American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, is author/editor of 15 books and exhibition catalogs. The Cambridge History of African American Literature, Teaching African American Literature: Theory and Practice, and the translingual Toni Morrison: Au delà du visible ordinary/Beyond the Visible and Ordinary complement her funded initiative: the History of Black Writing. Founded in 1983, this leading research center for literary recovery and archival preservation employing interactive/digital technologies has redefined the field of Black literary studies. Graham’s The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker (Oxford), is the first complete biography of the 20th writer and institution builder. Graham is University Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Kansas.

creates comics and graphic novels on social justice and radical history. Her books include Race to Incarcerate, and Our Lady of Birth Control: A Cartoonist’s Encounter with Margaret Sanger. She has created graphic biographies of Isadora Duncan, Jane Jacobs, Walt Whitman, FDR, Peace Pilgrim, and Jesus. She began cartooning in the political comics magazine World War 3 Illustrated, and has continued to edit and contribute to many issues, including the recent, My Body/Our Rights.

Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Northeastern University, has published seven books, including Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, and Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, both New York Times Notable Books. Her biography of Jessica Mitford is forthcoming from HarperCollins in 2025.  Kaplan chairs the Signs editorial board, founded Northeastern’s Humanities Center, has held fellowships from the NEH Public Scholars, the Guggenheim Foundation, Cullman Center, DuBois Institute, Schomburg Center, New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, and elsewhere, is on the BIO board, and is a Society of American Historians fellow.

has been at WME since 2023. She represents adult nonfiction that tells great stories, from biography and history to science, parenting, and memoir. Her clients include New York Times bestsellers and winners of awards from the Locus to PEN America, Fulbright, and NEH fellowships. She especially loves working with academics, journalists, and other experts with a knack for communicating original research to mainstream audiences. Before joining WME, Kaye was an agent and foreign rights director at the Ross Yoon Agency. A graduate of Smith College (B.A.) and University College London (M.A.), she lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and children.

is the author of seven No. 1 New York Times bestselling biographies: Oprah: A Biography (2010), The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty (2004), The Royals (1997), Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography (1991), His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra (1986), Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star (1981), and Jackie Oh! (1978). She also wrote two books about Stanley Tretick’s photographs and a children’s book, Martin’s Dream Day (2017). Kelley has received many honors from her peers, including the 2005 PEN Oakland/Gary Webb Anti-Censorship Award, the 2014 Founders’ Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and, most recently, the 2023 BIO Award.

Mehtab Khan’s scholarship explores the intersection of intellectual property, internet law, and data governance. She examines how technology shapes society and the role of law in mitigating its impact, with recent work on AI accountability frameworks, Generative AI regulation, and AI’s effects on creative industries. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Law at Cleveland State College of Law. She was previously a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University, and a Resident Fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. She has also been a visiting researcher at Stanford HAI and received multiple grants for research on AI in hiring. She has worked as a lawyer in the U.S., Malaysia, and Pakistan, with experience at the Wikimedia Foundation, Creative Commons, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She holds an LLM and JSD from UC Berkeley School of Law.

is an award-winning historian, biographer, and curator. Lee’s narrative nonfiction book The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home From Vietnam (St. Martin’s Press, 2019) is currently being developed as a television series. Her new book, The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: Washington’s Most Private First Lady, is the first commercial biography of First Lady Pat Nixon in almost 40 years. She currently serves on the boards of the First Ladies Association for Research and Education and Biographers International Organization.

is the co-founder and CEO of Real Spy Comics, which has exclusive access to never-before-told stories from real-life spies, clandestine agents, and covert operators. He is director of the Washington office of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, with more than 30 years of experience spanning national security, defense, and diplomacy. He was a national security professional with the Australian government. where he led multidisciplined teams to address Asia-Pacific regional security issues, and was the founder of OTX International, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit established while he and his team were exfiltrating at-risk Afghans being targeted by the Taliban.

is Distinguished Professor of art history, American studies, and women’s studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. An acknowledged authority on American painter Edward Hopper, she has curated landmark exhibitions, written many books, including Hopper’s catalogue raisonné; definitive first biographies of Hopper, Lee Krasner, and Judy Chicago; studies on Aaron Copland, Synchromism, and abstract expressionism; essays on theory of biographies of artists and ethics in the visual arts; and articles on modern and contemporary art ranging from the Stieglitz circle to American, Asian, and Jewish feminist artists.

is the author of Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins (Hachette Books, 2022), which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and the Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Award for Biography/Autobiography of the Year and was longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. He began work on the book as a Leon Levy Center for Biography fellow. He is the author of Dirty Blvd.: The Life and Music of Lou Reed and editor of Patti Smith on Patti Smith: Interviews and Encounters.

is the author, most recently, of the essay collection After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart. Her biography Margaret Fuller: A New American Life was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Biography. The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast is a genre-blurring biography-cum-memoir of her poetry professor at Harvard College in the 1970s.  She is the Charles Wesley Emerson College Professor at Emerson College and a recipient of the BIO Award.

is the critically acclaimed author of The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America (Atria, 2020) and High and Rising: A Book About De La Soul (Dey Street, 2024). Moore writes about jazz and other experimental music for various outlets and has curated concerts and interview programming in Washington, D.C., and New York City.

is the founder of Writing Commons and a professor of English at the University of South Florida. He has written, coauthored, or edited numerous works, including a novel, 14 nonfiction books, and 37 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Moxley has self-published numerous articles at Writing Commons, an open education resource (OER) designed to support writing teachers, students, professional writers, and the broader public. The project, which provides free and accessible content on writing, has been accessed by more than 15 million users worldwide. 

award-winning novelist, is accustomed to fabricating lives/lies in her fiction, but met her match in writing The Showgirl and the Writer: A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration (Peace Corps Writers, 2023). This hybrid memoir/biography explores the convergences between Mary Mon Toy, a Nisei performer, and Mueller’s own life history as a Caucasian born in the Tule Lake Japanese American High Security Segregation Camp. Mon Toy challenged Mueller’s nonfiction skills, in recreating herself as a Chinese American performer in order to wipe out her ethnicity and incarceration as Japanese American in post WWII America.

is professor emeritus of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the author of Hugo Black: A Biography (Pantheon, 1994), a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. The most liberal and influential U.S. Supreme Court justice of the 20th century, Black’s legal career was nearly derailed shortly after his appointment by Franklin Roosevelt in 1937 by exposés of his membership in the Ku Klux Klan as a young lawyer in Alabama. Newman has also taught constitutional Law at New York University and is editor of The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law (Yale University Press, 2009). He is now working on a book on the Supreme Court and the conservative movement.

an award-winning historian, is the founding director of the History and Public Policy Program at the Wilson Center, which brings historical context to international public policy issues. He oversees the Center’s Cold War International History Project, co-directs the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project and its Nuclear History Boot Camp, and the Cold War Archival Research Institute. He created the North Korea International Documentation Project, which documents North Korean politics and foreign policy. Under his leadership, the Center launched the global archival platform Digital Archive—International History Declassified, winner of the American Historical Association’s 2013 Roy Rosenzweig Prize.

journalist/oral historian, is the author of Mayor of the Tenderloin: Del Seymour’s Journey From Living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness in San Francisco (Beacon), called “a memorable biography… both entertaining and life-affirming” (Booklist) and “a richly satisfying tapestry” (San Francisco Chronicle). Her previous books include Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich (Rutgers), a New York Times Notable Book; Hey, Waitress! The USA From the Other Side of the Tray (California); and Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans (Rutgers). Different subjects, same questions: Have falsehoods swept into the interviews? What to do with whoppers (“Hitler did not know what went on in the camps”) or deflection (“my memory fails”)? Is the chaff as compelling as the wheat?

spent more than 40 years in daily journalism and is now, as an independent scholar, devoted to literary biography. He is a former board member of the National Book Critics Circle, an active member of the Ernest Hemingway Society, and currently president of Biographers International Organization. He co-edited a collection of scholarly essays on Ernest Hemingway’s early life and writings and is the author of Hemingway at Eighteen and Literary Alchemist: The Writing Life of Evan S. Connell. He is currently at work on a biography of the poet William Stafford.

is a Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, written with her father, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Les Payne, and published by Liveright. 

is a bestselling author, an accomplished presenter, and a graduate of Michigan State University. But her favorite title is “story teller,” with a little “research junkie” thrown in. Those characteristics have resulted in six biographies, including a bestseller and award-winners. An accomplished presenter, Pearson has turned her books’ subjects into presentations viewed by thousands in the U.S. and the U.K. She was named one of Chicago’s Most Inspirational Women by Chicago Magazine, selected as a finalist for the Arizona Healthcare Leadership Awards, and named a Phoenix Healthcare Hero. Pearson and her husband live in Nokomis, Florida.

is an art historian, writer, and director of content at the Museum of Modern Art. Her book The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever (2023) won the New York City Book Award, was shortlisted for the Plutarch Award for best biography, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and was longlisted for the National Book Award, among other accolades.

is the author of Martha Graham’s Cold War, which took her to archives internationally. It will be republished in Russian in 2027. She is a global fellow at the Wilson Center, a lecturer at the CUNY program in Biography and Memoir, and a fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Life Writing to complete a biography of Eleanor Lansing Dulles. Since 2013, she has co-directed the Cold War Archival Research Institute, which trains young scholars in cooperative methods of global research, and is the co-founder of the Global Biography Working Group.

is from San Diego and attended the California College of Arts and Crafts. In the 1980s, as a cartoonist and illustrator, she produced five humor books, including The Valley Girls’ Guide to Life. Now living in L.A., she continues to create comics for magazines and websites. Her 2014 graphic novel, Over Easy, a fictionalized account of her ’70s waitressing career, published by Drawn & Quarterly, was on the New York Times bestseller list, and won a PEN Award. She followed it up with 2017’s acclaimed The Customer Is Always Wrong. Her graphic biography of Britain’s storied Mitford sisters, Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me, will be published in fall 2025 by D&Q.

received his Ph.D. in American history from Columbia University and worked for David Rockefeller before joining the CIA in 1989. Robarge moved to the CIA History Staff in 1996 and was appointed chief historian of the CIA in 2005. His biography of Director of Central Intelligence John McCone was recently declassified, along with his most recent biography of General George Marshall. His articles and book reviews on CIA leaders have appeared in renowned journals. 

is an award-winning educator, author, and speaker, Her most recent book is Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson. Other books include the award-winning The Suffragist Playbook: Your Guide to Changing the World; Suffragists in Washington, D.C.: The 1913 Parade and the Fight for the Vote; and Historic Congressional Cemetery. She is currently deputy director of events at the Library of Congress and has previously worked as a journalist, producer, tour guide, forensic anthropologist, event planner, political consultant, jazz singer, and radio talk show host.

is a prolific biographer and a professor of journalism at Baruch College. He has written biographies of William Faulkner, Marilyn Monroe, Norman Mailer, and Thurgood Marshall, among many other figures in the world of literature, politics, and the arts. His forthcoming book, Making the American Presidency: How Biographers Shape History, will be published by the University of Virginia Press.

represents important commercial nonfiction across all genres. She co-founded the Washington D.C., office of WME in 2023. Prior to joining WME, she operated the Gail Ross Literary Agency, which became the Ross Yoon Agency in 2010. Washingtonian magazine has named her one of the most powerful women in Washington for several years running. Ross is also the author of The Writer’s Lawyer and The Essential Guide to Entertainment Law’s chapter on book publishing contracts. She speaks widely about publishing and book contracts across the country. Her daily mantra is: Books Change Lives. 

is a writer, editor, educator, and organizer working at the intersection of music, politics, and U.S. history. His work critically interrogates establishment wisdom and suppressed histories, especially around the guiding role that jazz and Black music have played in American society. Russonello is the only person to have served as both a politics columnist and a music critic for The New York Times. A 2024 DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities fellow and an adjunct professor at NYU, he also edits capitalbop.com, a web magazine covering the Washington, D.C., jazz scene, and is working on a book about Gil Scott-Heron and D.C. in the 1970s and ’80s (due out in 2026 from Metropolitan Books/Macmillan and Faber & Faber).

is a senior program officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities, where his responsibilities include overseeing the Public Scholars program and chairing review panels in the Fellowships program, the Summer Stipends program, and other programs supporting research in the humanities and social sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in East Asian languages and literatures from Yale University. He is the author of Purloined Letters: Cultural Borrowing and Japanese Crime Literature, 1868-1937 (University of Hawaii Press, 2008) as well as book reviews, peer-reviewed articles, and translations in the fields of modern Japanese literature and culture.

is a contributing writer for The New Yorker, based in Chicago. He has spent much of his career writing for newspapers, spending seven years in Europe for The Miami Herald and a decade on the national staff of The Washington Post, where he wrote about foreign policy and later traveled the country with an eye to politics and stories between the coasts. His portrait of Michelle Obama—Michelle Obama: A Life—was a finalist for the PEN America biography prize and rated as one of Booklist’s top 10 biographies of the year. He teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

is the Hargis Professor of American Studies at Auburn University. She wrote Imitation Artist: Gertrude Hoffmann’s Life in Vaudeville and Dance, published with Northwestern University Press in 2020. Her current research project is a cultural history of the New York Hippodrome. She has received fellowships from the New York Public Library, the Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities, and Wake Forest University. She has published extensively on popular performance and New York City.

is a San Francisco-based writer. His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Cineaste, The Dark Side, and The San Franciscan, among others. His first book, Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers, was published by Headpress in 2024. He is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston.

is a biographer, a historian, and a practicing clinical psychologist. His Pat and Dick: The Nixons, An Intimate Portrait of a Marriage (2014) was short-listed for the Plutarch Award and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. His previous books are The Roosevelts and the Royals (2004) and The Kennedys Against the Gathering Storm (2008). Swift is a founding Board member, a current Board member, and a past president of BIO. He particularly enjoys discovering facts which help repair historical reputations.

is the author of numerous biographies of twentieth-century American women, including Amelia Earhart, Molly Dewson, Mary Margaret McBride, and Billie Jean King, as well as two collective biographies.  She was the general editor of Notable American Women: Completing the Twentieth Century from 1997-2004 and of American National Biography from 2012-2022.  She has served on the selection committees for the Bancroft Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and BIO’s Plutarch Award and was a co-founder of the New England Biography Seminar at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

is a historian, author, and BIO board member. His 2019 biography, Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal (Liveright), was lauded as “an illuminating chronicle” (Edward Kosner, Wall Street Journal) that invoked “a fitting exemplar of Harlem’s ambitious Black middle class” (Publishers Weekly). It won Columbia University’s Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship of New York History, the Guides Association of New York City’s GANYC Apple Award, and recognition from the Municipal Art Society of New York’s Brendan Gill Prize committee. He chairs BIO’s Frances “Frank” Rollin Fellowship, for biographies-in-progress of African American figures.