PopMatters has posted an excerpt from Murphy Hicks Henry’s book about influential and often overlooked women in bluegrass, Pretty Good for a Girl. The first book devoted entirely to women in bluegrass, […]
Category: biography
Writing ‘I Have a Dream’
On August 28, 1963, in front of an estimated 250,000 people in the Washington D.C. mall, Martin Luther King Jr. gave what would become the most famous speech in civil […]
Happy birthday Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920. The celebrated author famously claimed to remember his own birth. Jonathan R. Eller, director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at […]
Remembering jazz pianist and author Marian McPartland
Jazz performer and musical ambassador Marian McPartland, passed away this week at her home in Port Washington, N.Y. at age 95. In addition to a performance career that took off […]
David Levering Lewis on MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail
Fifty years ago today Martin Luther King Jr. completed his open letter from Birmingham Jail. David Levering Lewis, writes in his book King: A Biography (recently released in a new […]
Read an excerpt from One Woman in a Hundred
SymphonyNOW has posted an excerpt from Mary Sue Welsh’s book about trailblazing harpist Edna Phillips, One Woman in a Hundred. Phillips was the first woman to hold a principal chair […]
An introduction from the editor
Last week we released Bluegrass Bluesman: A Memoir, by Josh Graves, and edited by Fred Bartenstein, a new book in our series Music in American Life. The book was a […]
Goodbye, Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury, author, Illinois native, and subject of Becoming Ray Bradbury, has died. Jonathan Eller, his biographer, had this to say about him in an article last year in New […]
Jane Bernstein at the Cleveland International Film Festival
Jane Bernstein is in Cleveland this week for the showing of Rachel Is in the Cleveland International Film Festival. The film, directed by daughter Charlotte Glynn, follows a year in […]
Midland Authors award winner
Congratulations, John Hallwas. The Society Of Midland Authors has named Dime Novel Desperadoes: The Notorious Maxwell Brothers winner of its 2009 prize in the Biography category. […]
Is President Obama Reading a UI Press book?
On inauguration day, Aretha Franklin gave President Barack Obama a collection of her dad’s sermons, along with a biography of her late father. Is it possible that she gifted Obama […]