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
Dec 29, 2020 • 6min
Part 2 of my interview with Alexis Coe
More discussion of how to shake up the genre of presidential biography.
Dec 29, 2020 • 10min
Part 1: Alexis Coe author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington
A wide ranging discussion of presidential biography and why Alexis Coe decided on what has been called a “historiographical intervention.”
Dec 26, 2020 • 39min
Episode 38: Ten Tips For Enterprising Biographers
My experience over 40 years of contacting sources and how they responded, and how I got them to respond.
Dec 19, 2020 • 38min
Episode 37: Why Plath: My Rollicking Interview with Emily Van Dyne about her forthcoming book
Much talk about Emily’s book, Loving Sylvia Plath, how students and other readers react to Plath, and the role biography plays in the mixed reactions to her work.
Dec 12, 2020 • 24min
How it took 30 years to write 2 pages of The Life of William Faulkner
Discussing my experience and Faulkner’s in Hollywood and how all that gets on the page.
Dec 12, 2020 • 24min
How it took 30 years to write 2 page of The Life of William Faulkner.
Describing my experience and Faulkner’s in Hollywood and how it all gets onto the page.
Dec 4, 2020 • 31min
Episode 35
Talking with Peter K. Steinberg, co-editor of The Letters of Sylvia Plath.
Nov 28, 2020 • 1h 8min
Episode 34: Speaking with Celia Stahr about her splendid biography Frida in America
A conversation about Frida Kahlo and her three years in America with a great cast of characters, including Henry Ford, the Rockefeller’s, Georgia O’Keefee, Louis Nevelson and much, much more.
Nov 21, 2020 • 48min
Episode 33: How I Became an Outlaw, Part 2: The Case of Michael Foot
Dealing with family and friends.
Nov 14, 2020 • 3h 3min
Episode 32: My conversation with Jonathan Alter about his new biography of Jimmy Carter.
We discuss the first full-length biography of Jimmy Carter, his achievements and failures, his rise from the bottom third to the top third of U.S. presidents, and much more about what a biography can accomplish.
