MORGAN VOELTZ

Morgan Voeltz is the 2020 Mayborn Fellow which awards biographers. WISC formed a new partnership with Mayborn and is excited to be hosting Morgan February 8-22. In collaboration with WISC, the Mayborn/BIO Hidden Figure Fellowship refocused on books about figures who merit a biography through their actions rather than fame.

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Morgan is a California native who began studying people while earning a B.A. in Sociology from Princeton University, and later pursued an M.A. in Nonfiction Writing from Johns Hopkins University to focus more closely on the craft of biography. She balances her writing work with a day job at the United States Department of State. Morgan has been a member of the Biographers International Organization (BIO) since 2014 and is represented by the Literary Agency Kneerim, Williams & Bloom, Boston MA. She currently lives in Washington, DC with her family.

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Morgan is passionate about telling true stories that juxtapose individuals’ unique traits with the cultural and historical settings that helped shape them. Historical collisions are her specialty: she seeks out little-known subjects whose experience reveals forgotten but crucial details of a historical moment through the eyes of a relatable character. Morgan is currently writing a dual biography of an American soldier and the Apache leader, Geronimo, whose lives intersected during the events in 1886 that led to Geronimo’s final surrender. The episode’s outcome juxtaposed tragedy with bittersweet triumph, exposing the complexity of both men’s characters as well as that of the times they lived in.