History is littered with women overshadowed by famous men. But what of their daughters? We look at 5 women who managed to claim their own identities beyond the reaches of their well-known dads. (READ MORE)
In Blake Bailey's biography "Cheever," readers glean a more nuanced understanding of John Cheever's wife Mary. Obituaries labeled her a "muse," but the imbalance in her relationship with John renders the term reductive at best. (READ MORE)
Nathan Gelgud illustrates the hardscrabble life described in Carol Sklenicka's biography 'Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life.' (READ MORE)
In his new memoir, The Splendid Things We Planned, Blake Bailey stitches together a complicated family portrait reminiscent of his literary biographies of John Cheever, Richard Yates, and Charles Jackson. (READ MORE)
In her new book, E.E. Cummings: A Poet's Life, Susan Cheever's position as John Cheever’s daughter serves as entry point into her interactions with Cummings, who served both as mentor to her father and a defiant and fearless inspiration to her at a pivotal time.(READ MORE)
Olivia Laing is on a personal and literary quest in The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking, which follows the influence of alcohol in the lives of John Berryman, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams. (READ MORE)
Listen in here as Blake Bailey, author of the new Charles Jackson biography Farther & Wilder, tells us what it's like to discover his subject's suicide note in New Jersey attic, be interviewed by Philip Roth for the job of upholding his legacy, and how being obsessive only helps a biographer.(READ MORE)
May 27, 2012 would be the 100th birthday of John Cheever, the influential twentieth century fiction writer affectionately known as "the Chekhov of the suburbs." On the occasion of his centennial, his daughter Susan Cheever spoke to Biographile this week from Yaddo, an artists' community located on 400...(READ MORE)
For those interested in the craft of biography, there's a great exchange on The Millions this week. Scott Donaldson, author of "John Cheever: A Biography" and last year's "Death of a Rebel: The Charlie Fenton Story," (a biography of a biographer), discusses the hazards of his craft -- including sharing...(READ MORE)
