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Extracting History from the Everyday: A Conversation about Shopping Stories with Molly Kerr
Molly Kerr of History Revealed, Inc., describes how to extract stories behind seemingly mundane 18th-century store ledgers and correspondence,
A Conversation with Sara Fitzgerald, Author of The Silenced Muse
A conversation with author Sara Fitzgerald, who “un-silences” the woman who inspired many of T.S. Eliot’s most famous poems.
A Conversation with Katie Bowler Young, Author of Enrique Alférez, Sculptor
Katie Bowler Young talks about the provocative subject of her 2020 biography and how she came to write about him.
A Conversation with Ted Pulliam, Author of True Tales of Old Alexandria
Ted Pulliam explained to me how previous research did double-duty in a new book, True Tales of Old Alexandria.
A Conversation with Samira Meghdessian, Translator of Remembering Ramallah
Samira Meghdessian talks about the joys and challenges of translating her uncle’s 60-year-old book from Arabic into English.
A Conversation with Eileen Bjorkman, Author of Fly Girls Revolt
A great conversation with my writing colleague—author and pilot Eileen Bjorkman!
Interviewing Lynne Olson at the Gaithersburg Book Festival
A great conversation with Lynne Olson, author of a biography of French archaeologist Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt.
A Conversation with Brenda Mitchell-Powell, Author of Public in Name Only: The 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-In Demonstration
Brenda Mitchell-Powell sheds light on an early civil rights sit-in—for equal access to the public library in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1939.
A Conversation with Diana Parsell, Author of Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington’s Cherry Trees
A conversation with Diana Parsell about the subject of her new biography and about the ups and downs of bringing the book to life.
Notes from BIO Craft Lab
Tips from accomplished biographers about how they create what they create.
"For mercy’s sake, don’t let anybody see this letter": Sarah J.C. Whittlesey
The letters of an Alexandria woman’s letters reveal her interior life.
A Conversation with Meg Groeling, Author of First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North’s First Civil War Hero
Read about Col. Elmer Ellsworth’s short but eventful life, which ended in a heroic death in Alexandria.
Behind the Written Word: Q and A with Katy O’Grady
Looking at scripts used by Japanese and Chinese women centuries ago, Katy O’Grady wondered how our brains can look at little shapes and instantly transform them into concepts.
Return to NARA I
Surrounded by thousands of pages of original letters, telegrams, and reports. Heaven.
Storytelling: An Interview with Jessica Piscitelli Robinson
Learn about the process of storytelling from an expert.
"They Called Us Girls": A Conversation with Author Kathleen Stone
In which Kathleen Stone, author of the forthcoming They Called Us Girls, talks about how she came to the idea for her group biography and how she carried it off.
Writing a Book Review of The Last King of America
With apologies to those who never write in books, how and why I reviewed The Last King in America for Washington Independent Review of Books.