For her outstanding research and creativity, Gerzina was named the UMass Amherst Spotlight Scholar for the Fall 2021 semester. “She has had an extraordinarily productive career,” says Randall Knoper, chair of the Department of English, praising her accomplishments in research and writing. “And she shows no signs of slowing down.”

Gerzina has dedicated her career to illuminating the lives of others as the author or editor of nine influential books, with two more in progress. Her work, which is both exacting and visionary, brings to light unknown facets of the lives of well-known figures as well as the lives of those overlooked by history.

Her prowess is widely acknowledged: Gerzina has received a Fulbright Scholar award and two National Endowment for the Humanities grants. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017 and to the American Antiquarian Society in 2019, and is in demand as a speaker, panelist, and podcaster in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

Gerzina calls herself an accidental biographer. Her first book, Carrington: A Life, grew from her PhD thesis and told the story of the English painter Dora Carrington, associated with the Bloomsbury group early in the 20th century. The novelist Meg Wolitzer says the book is “as full of idiosyncrasy, pleasure, and pathos as real life.”

Gerzina is candid about the struggle of writing biography. The intensive research, deep thinking, and imagination she brings to each project make it a complicated endeavor, even as she has become an acknowledged expert in it, having chaired the jury for the Pulitzer Prize for biography. Each of her books poses unique challenges. “The things you think you know about

telling a life don’t always hold true because lives are tricky things,” she says. “The truth is going to be different for every biographer. I love that aspect of the work.”