Pen to Purpose; Cultivating Writing as a Brand of Professionalism with Debby Applegate

Debby Applegate is a historian and writer of two critically acclaimed biographies. Her first book The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2007, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography, and was named one of the best books of the year.

With her second book, Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age , she plunged from the world of virtue to the underbelly of vice.

Debby was a Sterling Fellow in American Studies at Yale University, where she earned her Ph.D. She has taught at Yale University, Wesleyan University, and Marymount College.