Event

Telling the Untold Stories for Children: Biographies for Kids & Why They Matter

This is a hybrid event. The in-person reception will begin at 4:15 pm.

Biography can be a powerful vehicle for telling some of the untold and under-told stories of people’s lives. This may be especially true for children, who are forming their ideas about what matters, and who matters, in part through the books they read.

The New England Biography Series is proud to convene a conversation with three well-known children’s writers who focus on biographies of underrepresented groups. Ray Anthony Shepard, whose award-winning books for teens include biographies of well-known and relatively unknown Black Americans; and Heather Lang, whose biographies for young readers focus on amazing but mostly unfamiliar women, will discuss their work, what biographies for children can do, and why it’s important to be writing for children in these times when some communities struggle over control of school curricula, public library holdings, and controversies about whether there are books that should be banned.

Join the conversation at the New England Biography Series. By providing an opportunity for those interested in the craft of biography to convene and converse, this series creates a community that will support biographical works in progress and help inspire future projects. Learn more.

Purchasing the $25 seminar subscription gives you advance access to the seminar papers of all seven seminar series for the current academic year. Subscribe at www.masshist.org/research/seminars. Subscribers for the current year may login to view currently available essays.