-- Kristie Miller and Robert H. McGinnis on HNN.com Read

—Kristie Miller is interivewed on KUAT TV. Watch

--Kristie Miller on HNN.com Read

—The Hudson River Valley Review, Autumn 2009

… [A] fascinating story and a wonderfully versatile resource … Volume of Friendship will captivate a variety of readers. Miller and McGinnis have written excellent “bridge narratives” to fill in the history and significance of events and people mentioned in the letters . . . The editors include meticulous citations . . .  [A] welcome addition to women’s history and the history of the Roosevelt era.

            -- Sally Dwyer-McNulty, History Department, Marist College 

Associated Press Interviews Kristie Miller about the role of First Ladies  

When biographers finish their work, they usually move on to a new subject. Two new books provide models of ways one can get more mileage from the extensive research it takes to complete a biography.

In the first case, biographer Kristie Miller found an instructive way to extend the life of her work on her last subject by editing a collection of correspondence. In 1999 Miller, at work on her since-published biography of Isabella Greenway, wrote an article about the correspondence between Greenway and Eleanor Roosevelt for the Arizona Historical Journal. "It sold out the magazine, first time ever," Kristie told TBC. "So I knew there was interest."

This month the Arizona Historical Society will release A Volume of Friendship: The Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Isabella Greenway, 1904-1953, edited by Miller and Robert H. McGinnis.

Miller had already copied the letters for the research on her Greenway biography, but as she worked on the volume she realized that the letters alone were not enough. "I had to explain who the people in the letters were, decipher unusual words and figures of speech for modern readers, and give background on books and current events alluded to," she said. In the end it required that she and her co-editor write 850 footnotes, weave the letters into a narrative, and add an introduction and a conclusion.

Author Welford Dunaway Taylor's work on writer Sherwood Anderson offers a novel way to present one's research. Taylor compiled reminiscences of the famous author of Winesburg, Ohio and short stories into a book coming out this month from the University of Alabama Press. "Sherwood Anderson Remembered is an attempt to create a different biographical perspective for its subject, one that represents an alternative to the autobiographical narratives and the third-person portrayals," explained Taylor in his introduction.

These are two examples of sequels, if you wish, to biographies, but they are not necessarily easy to pull off. "The bottom line," said Miller, "is that it's a good way to get a second book out of the material you have already collected and digested, but it's also a lot of work."
—The Biographer’s Craft Newsletter, October 2009