My listeners respond

Ray Boomhower talks about what it is like to be a journalist in Vietnam and about what it is like writing biographies of journalists.

I had fun with this one. I really let it rip, if I do say so myself.

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.

Mary Dearborn does a valiant job of dealing with my interruptions in our discussion of her splendid biography of Carson McCullers.

You might want to read Plath’s poem “Mirror” as I explain my reactions to it as a biographer.

How Rebecca Rego Barry discovered Carolyn Wells, and why she wrote a biography of a forgotten literary figure, and how she did it.

Paul Alexander talks about his new state of the art biography of Billie Holiday. I listened and I learned.

My listeners respond and I comment on their comments

A rambling meditation on the biographer as exile.

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.