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'Twice Born' tells a tale of discovery through biography

The cover of "Twice Born" and author Hester Kaplan. (Courtesy of Catapult and Rupert Whiteley)
Courtesy of Catapult and Rupert Whiteley
The cover of "Twice Born" and author Hester Kaplan. (Courtesy of Catapult and Rupert Whiteley)

Hester Kaplan felt as though she never knew her father, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning biographer Justin Kaplan. But as she writes in her new memoir “Twice Born: Finding My Father in the Margins of Biography,” she began to discover who he was after his death, through reading his acclaimed biography of Mark Twain.

Kaplan joins host Tiziana Dearing to talk about the book.

Book excerpt: ‘Twice Born’

By Hester Kaplan

Excerpted from “Twice Born: Finding My Father In the Margins of Biography,” copyright © 2025 by Hester Kaplan. Reprinted by permission of Catapult.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2025 WBUR

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