Brenda Wineapple is the author of several books including The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation as well as Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877, both of them named best books of the year by The New York Times, among many other publications; White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Hawthorne: A Life, winner of the Ambassador Award; and Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein. Her numerous other honors include a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, two National Endowment Fellowships in the Humanities, and, most recently, a National Endowment Public Scholars Award. She has been named a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and regularly contributes to major publications such as The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, and The Nation.
