A Life in Biography
Carl Rollyson
Talks and interviews about the life of biography as experienced by a biographer over forty years and fourteen biographies, dealing with subjects ranging from Sylvia Plath to William Faulkner, Marilyn Monroe to Susan Sontag, and much more.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Apr 7, 2024 • 41min
Biography in the Prison House of Modernism, Part 2
I had fun with this one. I really let it rip, if I do say so myself.
Mar 23, 2024 • 43min
A new Greta Garbo biography by Lois Banner, with new sources and insights
Lois Banner, biographer of Marilyn Monroe, turns to Garbo, learns Swedish, and discovers all sorts of important sources not to be found in previous biographies.
Mar 17, 2024 • 52min
Mary Dearborn discusses her new biography of Carson McCullers
Mary Dearborn does a valiant job of dealing with my interruptions in our discussion of her splendid biography of Carson McCullers.
Mar 10, 2024 • 17min
Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” and the Prison House Modernism
You might want to read Plath’s poem “Mirror” as I explain my reactions to it as a biographer.
Mar 3, 2024 • 17min
Authors vanish after they die and are revived. A talk with the biographer of Carolyn Wells.
How Rebecca Rego Barry discovered Carolyn Wells, and why she wrote a biography of a forgotten literary figure, and how she did it.
Feb 25, 2024 • 34min
A rollicking interview with Paul Alexander about his new biography of Billie Holiday.
Paul Alexander talks about his new state of the art biography of Billie Holiday. I listened and I learned.
Feb 18, 2024 • 30min
My listeners respond
My listeners respond and I comment on their comments
Feb 11, 2024 • 16min
Why Biography Doesn’t Belong
A rambling meditation on the biographer as exile.
Feb 4, 2024 • 31min
A talk with Marian Janssen, biographer of Carolyn Kizer, one of the wild women of American poetry
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.
Jan 28, 2024 • 34min
How close is too close when it comes to the biography of your subject?
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 Private Life of Michael Foot
