Writing It!
The Podcast About Academics & Writing
Displaying 6 items of Writing It! with the tag "biography".
-
Episode 71: When the Biography Writing Road is Long with Megan Marshall
March 9th, 2026 | 54 mins 3 secs
biography, elizabeth bishop, fellowships, pulitzer
We’re speaking with Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winner and Professor Emerita at Emerson College, she is the author of biographies of Margaret Fuller, the Peabody Sisters, and Elizabeth Bishop, among other books. We speak about working on writing projects that take many years, writing about her former teacher (poet Elizabeth Bishop), unexpected turns in a writing project (including changing editors), archive discoveries, organizing notes, recreating scenes from long ago, writing groups, and balancing our absorption with a subject and our own family life. We also talked about Megan’s turn to writing about her own family in her most recent book, After Lives: On biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart.
-
Episode 51: Heather Clark Part II: Maybe you don’t have to “stay in your lane”
June 2nd, 2025 | 31 mins 14 secs
academic jobs, biography, english department, english professors, fiction, trade press
We speak with literary scholar Heather Clark about moving from biography to novel-writing, why it can be helpful to move back and forth between non-fiction and fiction, and why academic writers might want to rethink the “stay in your lane” approach.
-
Episode 50: Heather Clark Part I: When the editor says, “We want a doorstopper!
May 19th, 2025 | 28 mins
archival research, biography, cold war, phd; literature, sylvia plath, trade press
We speak with literary scholar and biographer, Heather Clark, author of Red Comet, which was selected for the New York Times Book Review's "10 Best Books of 2021" list and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. It won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in 2022. We talk about how Clark made the case for the eleventh biography of Sylvia Plath to her agent, and what it was like for her editor to tell her that she actually wanted a doorstopper of a book. Clark tells us about how she treated Plath’s fiction and poetry in the context of telling Plath’s life story, and how Clark organized her research notes. Clark also tells us about the group biography she wrote after Red Comet, and her next biography subject.
-
Episode 34: When Writing Becomes Like Painting
October 7th, 2024 | 43 mins 29 secs
biography, editing, jewish studies, religion, trade press
Harvard Divinity School Professor Shaul Magid began his undergraduate education as a painter. Over time, as he became an academic and a professor, Magid found that writing took the place of painting – that is, writing is his artistic and creative expression, and the thing that he’s basically always doing. We speak about how changing one’s institutions – Magid has taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Indiana University, Dartmouth, and Harvard Divinity School—has changed his writing and for whom he wants to write. We speak about the appeal of biography, the value of writing for a broader audience and why the editorial feedback can be difficult to take, but ultimately worthwhile.
-
Episode 27: Turning points in our academic writing
July 1st, 2024 | 43 mins 47 secs
academic writing, biography, church history, journalism, short books, tenure & promotion
We speak with Elesha Coffman, Associate Professor of History at Baylor University about writing a book that takes its shape from turning points in history. Coffman is the author of Turning Points in American Church History: How Pivotal Events Shaped a Nation and a Faith. Baker Academic, 2024; Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith. Spiritual Lives Series, Timothy Larsen, series editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021; and The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. We talk about changing academic institutions and changing our writing priorities; the ways tenure and promotion requirements influence our writing; the advantages of books that allow you to “write short”; and the benefits that come with creating writing groups.
-
Episode 22: Maurice Samuels on the Challenges of writing Biography
April 22nd, 2024 | 38 mins 21 secs
academic publishing, biography, dreyfus affair, editorial feedback, french history, trade press
We speak with Yale Professor Maurice Samuels about writing biography, and the importance of finding stories we feel compelled to tell. Samuels talks about finding the right writing voice; when to share writing with colleagues and friends; potential benefits and consequences of publishing with a trade press; creating a table of contents that helps readers; the importance of footnotes; and how our career stage might influence the kind of books we write.