Jean Strouse, the biographer and director of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, has won the first BIO Award, to be given each year by members of Biographers International Organization to a colleague who has made "a major contribution to the advancement of the art and craft of real life depiction."
Strouse will receive the honor during the 2010 Compleat Biographer conference on May 15 at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where she will deliver the keynote address.
BIO's interim president Debby Applegate said, "Strouse's astonishing, masterful, and inspiring work on Alice James and J. Pierpont Morgan has made her a biographer's biographer. As the first recipient of this award, she is setting a high standard for future honorees." Alice James: A Biography won the Bancroft Prize in 1980.
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The long list for the 2010 SIBA Book Awards features 101 books that Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance members will vote on to create a list of finalists. A jury of SIBA booksellers will then pick the winners, who will be announced in July.