Emily Bingham
Emily Bingham
Emily Bingham
Emily Bingham is a historian and biographer whose work recovers the lives of fascinating figures from American history who have been overlooked or misrepresented by conventional narratives. Her meticulously researched writing combines the rigor of academic scholarship with the narrative drive of a skilled storyteller, making complex historical subjects accessible to general readers. Bingham specializes in uncovering the hidden dimensions of her subjects’ lives—the contradictions, desires, and bold choices that make them fully human rather than merely historical abstractions.
Her biography Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham exemplifies her gift for bringing marginal figures into sharp focus. The work, which won the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Literature, traces the extraordinary life of a wealthy Louisville heiress who became a bohemian cultural figure in 1920s Paris and London. Through Bingham’s careful reconstruction, Henrietta emerges as a vital presence in twentieth-century modernist circles—a woman whose sexuality, ambition, and artistic patronage challenged the expectations placed on women of her class and era. The recognition from the Lambda Literary Awards speaks to Bingham’s commitment to telling queer histories with honesty and nuance, centering voices and experiences that traditional historical accounts have relegated to the margins.