Annual Conference Panels

Basics

Narrative Uses of Perspective and Voice

Moderator: Lauren Arrington
Panelists: Natalie Dykstra, Maryemma Graham, Prudence Peiffer

How do we negotiate proximity to our subjects through the narrative choices that we make? How do we modulate tone and voice in our writing to convey our own perspectives and the perspectives of our subjects? This panel will explore how biography is a space for narrative innovation and how biographers can adapt techniques from other genres.

Ask an Agent

Interviewer: A’Lelia Bundles
Guest: Gail Ross

One of the biggest mysteries for biographers is the process of finding a literary agent. Do you need an agent to get a book deal with a publisher? What should you expect from the author/agent relationship? You’ll have a chance to pose those questions and more to Gail Ross, founder of the Gail Ross Literary Agency, and more recently founder of the WME (William Morris Endeavor) Washington, D.C., office. Four of the books Ross represented have won the Pulitzer Prize: Ada

Ferrer’s Cuba: An American History, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s American Prometheus, Joby Warrick’s Black Flags, and Tina Rosenberg’s The Haunted Land. Her clients include thought leaders, CEOs, social justice activists, journalists, historians, and experts in a variety of fields. She and her team have earned a reputation in the industry for providing rigorous, enthusiastic editorial guidance at all stages of the publishing process.

The Unreliable Narrative Source: Coping With Essential but Untrustworthy Sources

Moderator: Eve M. Kahn
Panelists: Marnie Mueller, Alison Owings, Eric K. Washington

If only everyone always told the verifiable truth! When biographers delve into another person’s life, we may assume that the basic record will hold up, with some fudging or misremembrance here and there. But what happens if we discover that our subject is sometimes (or often) a liar? That some primary or secondary sources, not to mention accepted lore, have gotten it wrong? How much do we trust interviewees, whose tales may have no written record or other witnesses? In weaving graceful, intelligible, engaging narratives, how do we balance what our research uncovers that contradicts our subjects’ stories, and what we suspect motivated their deceptions? This panel of biographers and oral historians will tackle the tall tales and tangled trails of truth-telling, an increasingly important subject in an age of pervasive and pernicious deepfakes and “alternative facts.”

Chasing Ghosts: First-Time Biographers Confronting Elusive Subjects

Moderator: Sunny Stalter-Pace
Panelists: Gail Levin, Alec Nevala-Lee, John Troutman

What happens when a first-time biographer chooses to write about an elusive figure, especially one with a carefully guarded private life? Anxiety. Wrestling to unearth hidden or buried primary source material. Panic and depression. And then, sometimes, bursts of revelation and grace that lead to cracking the story, seeing the project to completion, and finally, publication. A discussion with biographers who chose to tackle particularly difficult subjects for their first books: Edward Hopper, Connie Converse, Gertrude Hoffman, Robert Johnson, and Buckminster Fuller. Topics to be discussed may include earning the trust of interviewees, methodology for tracking down primary source material, dealing with recalcitrant estates, interfacing with editors and publishers, making judgments about what deserves to be in the public record even when certain information is unflattering or harmful to the subject’s reputation, and carrying forward the legacy of complicated individuals.

Issues

The Next Phase of AI and Biography

Moderator: Jared Stearns
Panelists: Ann Chaitovitz, Mehtab Khan, Joseph M. Moxley

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing how biographies are researched, written, and safeguarded, offering unprecedented opportunities and daunting challenges. Generative AI is transforming storytelling while raising profound ethical questions about authenticity, originality, accuracy, and the role of the human voice. This panel assembles an exceptional group of experts to tackle these pressing issues. An English professor will explore biographers’ ethical dilemmas in an AI-driven landscape. A copyright and intellectual property lawyer will break down the latest legal developments, highlighting strategies (if any) to protect creative work in this evolving environment. Finally, an AI expert from Georgetown University will unveil where this rapidly advancing technology is headed, the larger implications of its usage, and how it might redefine the literary world. Join this dynamic conversation to understand better how AI is reshaping the future of biography.

For the Win: Biographers Tackle the Lives, Legacies, and Impact of Athletes in and out of Sports

Moderator: Susan Ware
Panelists: Madeleine Blais, Ashley Brown, Samuel G. Freedman, Andrew Maraniss

This panel addresses sports and the people who play them. We are told it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game. But how do biographers comprehensively research and engagingly write about the exploits, growth, and impact of their subjects within competitive games and in the game of life? How does writing about people in sports compare with writing about people in other fields? What can biographers of athletes learn from biographers of others, and vice versa? This panel explores the craft and process of composing biographies of sports figures, revealing the ways that athletes and their biographers grapple with myriad complexities, including misconceptions about sports and their players, social and cultural history, and challenges and contributions within and beyond the playing arena and the business of sports.

Skeletons in the Closet

Moderator: Vincent DiGirolamo
Panelists: Barbara Burkhardt, Kitty Kelley, Roger K. Newman

This panel addresses the ethical and narrative dilemmas that arise when a biographer learns that a subject has engaged in reprehensible or suspect behavior. The person’s misdeeds may be part of the public record or come to light only through the biographer’s research and interviews. In either case, a writer must figure out how best to handle the findings. Is it ever acceptable to omit damaging material? What if our subject is still alive? Beyond reporting facts, is it our place to pass moral judgment? How do we navigate between past and present standards of morality or provide context for understanding our subject’s actions without becoming an apologist for them? Scandals also present narrative challenges in that they can overshadow our subject’s accomplishments. Does scandal still sell or are publishers justifiably wary of books about people who have disgraced themselves? Wither the “warts and all” biography in the 21st century?

Ten Years and Counting: How to Live With Your Biography

Moderator: Carla Kaplan
Panelists: Nicholas Boggs, Megan Marshall, Tamara Payne

Researching and writing a life often takes a very long time, and nearly always longer than the biographer expects: organizing and digitizing an archive, creating an historical/intellectual/cultural context, traveling to the places that mattered to a subject and helped make them who they were, transforming massive amounts of information into narrative. This panel will touch on practical aspects of the long haul—funding, time management, and strategies for making archival research more efficient. But the primary focus will be on the psychology of living with another person’s life for a decade or more. Managing self-doubt and deadline anxiety, keeping your personal relationships in order, finding community, even making the loneliness of the long-distance writer work to your advantage. All these will be considered in a wide-ranging discussion that welcomes audience participation. So many of us have been there!