Brenda Wineapple is New Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography

The Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has announced that Dr. Brenda Wineapple will serve as its new director. Wineapple is known for her remarkable achievements as author, biographer, scholar, and teacher. Her most recent book, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Knopf, 2008), was a Washington Arts Club National Award winner, a New York Times "Notable Book,” a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, and was named best nonfiction of 2008 by The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Economist, among other publications.

Previously, Wineapple taught at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and most recently, in the MFA programs at The New School and Columbia University. Her other books include Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner; Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein; and Hawthorne: A Life, which received the Ambassador Award of the English-Speaking Union for the Best Biography of 2003 and the Julia Ward Howe Prize from the Boston Book Club. Her essays and reviews regularly appear in such publications as The New York Times and The Nation, and her recent essay "Her Own Society," published in The American Scholar, is the recipient of a 2009 Pushcart Prize. Wineapple has also received a Guggenheim fellowship, a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.


The Leon Levy Center for Biography
The Leon Levy Center for Biography was established in 2008 at the CUNY Graduate Center by a gift from the Leon Levy Foundation. Envisioned as a hub for writers, scholars, students and readers of the genre, the Leon Levy Center for Biography commenced programming in the academic year beginning September 2008. The center seeks to build connections between university-affiliated and independent biographers working in print, film, visual arts, and new media across academic disciplines. The center is directed by acclaimed biographer David Nasaw, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Chair in American History at the Graduate Center.
The Graduate Center
 
The Graduate Center is the primary doctorate-granting institution of the City University of New York (CUNY). The school offers more than 30 doctoral programs, as well as a number of master's programs. The Graduate Center is also home to more than 30 interdisciplinary research centers and institutes and offers an extensive array of public lectures, exhibitions, concerts, and theatrical events. Further information on the Graduate Center and its programs can be found at www.gc.cuny.edu.