Catching Lives: The writing of profiles and biographies

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In a new book about her work as longtime obituary writer for the Economist, Ann Wroe dubs the task "catching lives": i.e., capturing and conveying the crucial elements that illuminate a subject's personality, behavior, motivation, and even their soul. We will explore journalistic techniques, along with ethical and even moral considerations, in the writing of lives, both the living and the dead, in formal biographies, in informal profiles, in obituaries, and in appreciations. From current books such as His Name Is George Floyd and Elon Musk and Going Infinite, to the pithy profiles of contemporary figures written on deadline in the wake of news events, how do life-writers — who must be part detective, part psychoanalyst, part historian, and part gossip-trawler, but always fair and thorough — go about their work?