Santa Fean wins top biographer award
The Biographers International Organization announced Thursday that Santa Fe writer James McGrath Morris has been named the winner of the 10th annual BIO Award, which goes to authors who have made a major contribution to the art and craft of the form.
Previous award winners include Pulitzer Prize winners Robert Caro, Stacy Schiff and Ron Chernow.
“For me to see my idea take root and then be invited to the 10th annual conference in this manner is very special,” said Morris, who helped co-found the organization in 2010. “There is nothing more rewarding than being honored by one’s peers.”
Morris will receive the honor May 18 at the 2019 BIO Conference at City University of New York. He will deliver the keynote address.
Morris’ work includes a biography on civil rights reporter Ethel Payne (Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press ),a New York Times best-seller that the paper called an “important and often absorbing new book.”
He also wrote The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism, Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power and, most recently, The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War.
Morris is working on a biography of the late Tony Hillerman, author of mysteries set in the Navajo Nation.
“I’m the least wellknown biographer to get this prize,” he said. “My name being added to this list of such distinguished writers is certainly career enhancing. Readers won’t necessarily notice but editors do.”