LIFE IN THE BIO-SPHERE

LITERATI The Biography Building. That’s what Preston Villa management and residents have called Building 24 since 1989, when two biographers moved in just three doors apart.

PENELOPE NIVEN and TIM REDMAN wanted a quiet spot for thinking and writing-and trees to look at during breaks from work. They first met in the parking lot of the far North Dallas complex.

“I knew he was the new neighbor and that he was writing,” Niven says. “But then I discovered his subject. He was writing about Pound, and I was writing about Sandburg, and they took a great deal of interest in each other’s work early in their careers.”

Redman is an associate dean and associate professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. His first book, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, was published last March for a primarily academic audience. In August, Niven’s Carl Sandburg: A Biography debuted to triumphant reviews in the newspapers of some 80 cities. By that time, the two writers-like their subjects-were highly interested in each other’s work.

The two now share both literary agent and publisher. Scribner’s will bring out Redman’s Citizen Ezra Pound, a comprehensive biography of the controversial American poet, in 1994. Niven is writing her next book, also for Scribner’s, with and about actor James Earl Jones. It is due for publication early in 1993.