BIO Editorial Excellence Award - Michael Korda

Biographers International Organization (BIO) is pleased to celebrate the work of Michael Korda with the presentation of its 2023 Editorial Excellence Award. Established in 2014, this annual award honors an editor for outstanding work in the service of biography and literature.

Korda will receive the award in New York on Wednesday, November 1, at an event beginning at 6:30pm in the Skylight Room of the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street).

Free and open to the public but registration is required.

Michael Korda was an editor and later editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster for nearly five decades. Among the more than 500 books he worked on, he edited all three of David McCullough's prize-winning biographies -- of Harry Truman, John Adams, and the young Theodore Roosevelt -- as well as autobiographies by Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Kirk Douglas, and Charles de Gaulle.

Korda himself has written biographies of Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and T.E. Lawrence, as well as several works of history, including one about the Battle of Britain and one about Dunkirk. His book about the lives of the major soldier-poets of World War One, Muse of Fire, will be published in February 2024. His several memoirs, including Another Life, reveal fascinating aspects of his life and the publishing world.

Born in London, Korda was educated at Institute Le Rosey in Switzerland, and Magdalen College, Oxford. He served in the Royal Air Force and received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary for his participation in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He makes his home in Dutchess County, New York, with his wife, Maggie Simmons.

Among the scheduled speakers paying tribute to Korda will be authors Ian Buruma, Kitty Kelley (a BIO Board Member), and Simon Winchester.

BIO's Editorial Excellence Award has been presented since 2014. Past recipients are Bob Bender, Tim Duggan, Robert Gottlieb, Gerald Howard, Gayatri Patnaik, Jonathan Segal, Ileene Smith, Nan A. Talese, and Robert Weil.

Biographers International Organization (BIO), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, was founded in 2009. BIO aims to promote the art and craft of biography, cultivate a diverse community of biographers, encourage public interest in biography, and provide educational and fellowship opportunities that support the work of biographers worldwide.

In addition to hosting the annual BIO conference, BIO offers in-person and online events, publishes two monthly newsletters, supports aspiring and practicing biographers with prizes and fellowships, honors outstanding biographers, editors and librarians with awards, and offers a coaching program.