HeyJaredBiographers in Conversation
Biographers in Conversation is a podcast about the multiplicity of choices biographers make while crafting life stories.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 16
- Latest publication
- Sep 27, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Aug 7, 2026
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To resolve contradictions? To preserve contradictions? That’s the question. (opens the original)
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What does a biographer do when the subject refuses to fit comfortably into a single moral or political category? In the next episode of Biographers in Conversation, I speak with historian and ethicist Nigel Cameron about writing Dr. Koop: The Many Lives of the Surgeon General. Koop was a pioneering paediatric surgeon, a socially conservative Presbyterian and a prominent opponent of abortion. Yet, as US Surgeon General, he defied the expectations of allies and adversaries alike. He challenged the
Can fiction sometimes tell a deeper truth than memoir? (opens the original)
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In the latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Kathryn Heyman chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting her memoir Fury and seventh novel, Circle of Wonders. Kathryn examines what it means to craft truth across multiple genres, the meaning of facts and truth in literature and the formal experimentation that defines Fury and Circle of Wonders.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.c
Facts and Truth Are Not the Same Thing ... (opens the original)
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The 21st-century landscape for biography is in a state of creative ferment. Experimentation is increasing, blurring boundaries between biography and other genres. Hybrid, genre-defying forms are emerging as life writers blend biography with memoir, fiction, essays, travel writing, history, and feminist polemic. Many novelists write close to life, giving their fiction a powerful sense of truth, depth and emotional veracity. <a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.co
Researching a biography means following curiosity and intuition ... (opens the original)
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How does a biographer decide which discoveries illuminate a life and which, however fascinating, lead the narrative away from its purpose? What makes a detail meaningful to the reader? When does context deepen a story, and when does it become a digression?<source type="image/webp"
What happens when biography looks at two lives at once? (opens the original)
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Biography traditionally asks us to enter one life and see the world through one consciousness. But what happens when the biographer places two lives side by side, allowing each to become a lens through which the other is newly understood?<img alt="" clas
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