Writing the Lives of the Well Known and the Unknown

Annette Gordon-Reed, the renowned historian and author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award), gives this year’s talk on writing and researching biography. Her many other books include Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy; Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History; and On Juneteenth. Gordon-Reed, who is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University, has received numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Humanities Medal.​