Becoming a biographer

So long as they are not otherwise illegal, biographies do not have to be authorized. I imagine the first step would be to think about who you would be able to sustain enough interest in to write a biography--and see what your options are from there.

Perhaps you could put together a brief proposal of the type of biography you propose (angle, publisher etc) and see if there is interest? It might help you you could pull in a more experienced mentor of some kind to endorse the project.

One of the very first things I would do is join Biographers International Organization (BIO), which is the only literary organization devoted solely to biography. BIO members can help answer a lot of your questions, and (if you're a member) you can download off BIO's website copies of proposals for successful biographies (including, among many, my proposal for Jim Henson). There's also an annual conference (in Richmond, Virginia in 2015) with all sorts of useful panels and plenary sessions, along with knowledgeable speakers (including Pulitzer winners, Guggenheim recipients, and so on). It's a great resource for biographers.

BIO's home page is here: http://biographersinternational.org/ and you can join here: http://biographersinternational.org/join/

And yeah, I'm the current president of the organization. But I wasn't when I joined in 2009 -- in fact, I was still unpublished. Now I've got two bios published with another in the works.