Diane Middlebrook, 1939-2007

I was sad to learn today that Diane Middlebrook has died. I never worked with Prof. Middlebrook at Stanford; my only encounter with her was over email. When I wrote to ask her for guidance about becoming a biographer, she advised doing what she did — “appointing” myself to a project and “bumbling along.” She offered to help me learn how to organize my research, a task which she said was one of the most challenging parts of writing biography.

I am happy now that I had the presence of mind to write back and thank her when my biography project was published.