I spent yesterday afternoon and evening on Zoom, attending Bio Lab 2026, the annual "online forum" of Biographers International Organization, a name surely chosen so they could use the acronym BIO.

It was great. There were four sessions, all presented by eminent biographers, sharing tips and offering advice on--you'll never guess!--writing biography. I asked questions, I made notes, I tried to maintain a poker face when the opening speaker, the only person whose presentation was pre-recorded, made some statements I disagreed with. (What's that? There's no great standalone biography of Betty Friedan? Nonsense, Rachel Shteir's Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter may be slim, but it's excellent--and left me a tiny bit more sympathetic to Friedan than I was when I started it!)

I had a blast, and I learned a lot, but I almost didn't recognize myself.

I've never been one for taking classes. I think the sum total of my "adult education" is: a few language classes; a series on "investigative journalism" at the Institute for Policy Studies in about 1985--I didn't really learn anything except, thanks to the instructor's habit in the break, that red peppers could be eaten as snacks; and a course on "Scotland in Union and Dis-Union" here in Edinburgh.

I'm also not a joiner. On those occasions when I have to fill out an application form, I stare at the empty "membership organizations" section and can't think of a thing to add. And yet, within weeks of getting a book deal for a biography of Rita Mae Brown, I was a fully paid-up member of BIO and its British equivalent, The Biographers' Club.

Finally, while I've bought several books about the craft of writing over the years, I don't think I've ever actually finished one! And yet, in the last 18 months, I've read at least half a dozen books about the writing of biography. (An example of a great one is Deirdre Bair's Parisian Lives, about how she came to write her biographies of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, both of which were challenging in different ways. I've read it twice!)

What on earth is going on here? I don't think that it's that I'm maturing as a person--God forbid! However, I do have a few potential explanations for this transformation.

The first is that biographies present some very specific challenges. For me, by far the most scary are potential legal issues. Ian Hamilton's dismay when he wasn't allowed to use unpublished material in his biography of J.D. Salinger--and how that compelled him to re-write a hollowed-out version of his original manuscript--is a cautionary tale. But this makes a good case for learning the rules before you start. (Of course, they're always up for reinterpretation, but that's not a reason to ignore them!)

And then ... the psychological question. No matter how much you learn about the facts of a person's life and hear from people who knew them, can you ever really understand another human being, much less capture their essence for others? I'm not a psychologist, and although I've lived with a trained therapist for nearly 30 years, I don't plan to take a psychological approach, though I still hope I might capture something of Rita Mae's essence!

There is an added issue when writing about a living person--how do you interact with that person? The most daunting account of working with a subject is Adam Sisman's The Secret Life of John le Carré, his second bite at JlC's life, which tells the frankly terrifying story of how le Carré freaked out when he realized that Sisman knew about his numerous affairs. He pretty much threatened to harm himself if Sisman told all--and the ultimate blow, he published a series of "stories from my life" right when Sisman's big biography was about to be released. (I had a great conversation about all this with Sisman for the Working podcast.) This stuff is too unpredictable to really prepare yourself for--but forewarned is forearmed, so that reading has felt useful.

Finally, I suppose, I'm a lone wolf these days. (I really can't picture myself as a wolf. A lone wombat?) Although I'm an only child through and through, and I don't crave the company of co-workers (even though I loved my co-workers), a yearslong solo project is a bit different than preferring to spend a day at home working on an article. So maybe I'm just looking for sisters and brothers in the struggle.

This is all very well, but I recently realized something. Ever since I signed up for this book, I have had a vague intention to check in with the people I know who have written biographies--quite a few as it happens. Although I'm quite good at crossing things off my to-do list these days, I never did tackle this low-effort project. And then in the middle of last week I was emailing with an old boss whose CV includes a biography, so I asked for advice ... and I didn't like it. Not because there was anything wrong with it--in fact, I'm sure he's absolutely right. He told me not to wait too long to start writing, because that will show you what additional research needs to be done. The same tip was given at least twice in yesterday's Zoom sessions. Will I take it? I know I should, but I like research a lot more than writing, so ... probably not! Oy!

RECOMMENDATION: I know it's a bit bold to recommend a novel I haven't finished, but I am in the middle of Chosen Family, by Madeline Gray, a book about finding your people. It's a little hard to describe--especially since there are still several things I haven't yet figured out--but it is queer, Australian, and about the generation who grew up with phones. (Phones aren't particularly relevant to the book--that just feels like a more useful way to categorize people than generational names that don't really tell you anything.) It's also VERY well-written. I'm loving it--and I'm going to go see Gray at a Wuthering Dykes/Lighthouse Books event on Tuesday. Come by if you're in Edinburgh!

LISTEN TO ME: I've been on a couple of podcasts recently. There are some amazing guests, and me, on Our Dyke Histories, a series hosted by the supersmart (and very kind) Jack Jen Gieseking, produced in collaboration with Sinister Wisdom. I also talked with the delightful Bradley Dalton-Oates on her show Eurovision Song Context, where we connected Eurovision with the question of whether a zero-star review (nul points) might actually be better than a one-star response. Finally, slightly off-rubric, but I really liked this YouTube review of A PLACE OF OUR OWN, and you might too.

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