Award winning biography books
2023 Rules & Eligibility
The 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards have two rounds of voting open to all registered Goodreads members. Winners will be announced December 07, 2023.
Opening Round: Nov 14 - 26
In the first round there are 20 books in each of the 15 categories, and members can vote for one book in each category.
Final Round: Nov 28 - Dec 03
The field narrows to the top 10 books in each category, and members have one last chance to vote!
Books published in the United States in English, including works in translation and other significant rereleases, between November 17, 2022, and November 15, 2023, are eligible for the 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards. Books published between November 16, 2023, and November 14, 2024, will be eligible for the 2024 awards.
We analyze statistics from the millions of books added, rated, and reviewed on Goodreads to nominate 20 books in each category. For the Audiobook category, nominations are based on the millions of titles added, rated, and reviewed both on Goodreads and Audible.
Opening round official nominees must have an average rating of 3.50 or higher at the time of launch. A book may be nominated in no more than one genre category, but can also be nominated in the Debut Novel and/or Audiobook categories. Only one book in a series may be nominated per category. An author may receive multiple nominations within a single category if they have more than one eligible series or more than one eligible stand-alone book. Learn more
The Plutarch Award
Congratulations to Yepoka Yeebo, winner of the 2024 Plutarch Award for Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World.
Eligibility:
- Biographies published in English (including in translation) during the current calendar year are eligible for nomination.
- Nominated biographies must be by an author or group of authors about another figure or figures.
- Nominated biographies may include those about two or more people, as well as those written in narrative forms other than cradle-to-grave format.
- Autobiographies, memoirs, works of fiction, self-published works, and non-print forms of biography are not eligible.
- Both publishers and BIO members may nominate books before December first of the current year.
Publishers wishing to nominate biographies should email BIO for instructions.
BIO members may nominate biographies (including their own work) by filling out the nomination form—one form per book, please. There is no limit on the number of books a member may propose.
This is a complete listing of past Plutarch Award finalists, with the winner for each year highlighted in bold.
2024
- Jonathan Eig, King: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Howard Fishman,To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse (Dutton)
- Lisa M. Hamilton, The Hungry Season: A Journey of War, Love, and Survival (Little, Brown and Company)
- Sally H. Jacobs, Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson (St. Martin’s Press)
- Prudence Peiffer, The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever (Harper)
- Larry Rohter, Into the Amazon: The Life of Cândido Rondon, Trailblazing Explorer, Scientist, Statesman, and Conservationist (W. W. Norton & Company)
- Barbara D. Savage, Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar (Yale University Press)
- Willard Spiegelman, Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt (Alfre
Pulitzer Prize for Biography
American award for distinguished biographies
The Pulitzer Prize for Biography is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. The award honors "a distinguished and appropriately documented biography by an American author." Award winners received $15,000 USD.
From 1917 to 2022, this prize was known as the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and was awarded to a distinguished biography, autobiography or memoir by an American author or co-authors, published during the preceding calendar year. Thus it is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year.
Recipients
In its first 97 years to 2013, the Biography Pulitzer was awarded 97 times. Two were given in 1938, and none in 1962.
1910s-1940s
Year Author Title Ref. 1917 Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott, assisted by Florence Howe Hall Julia Ward Howe 1918 William Cabell Bruce Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed 1919 Henry Adams The Education of Henry Adams 1920 Albert J. Beveridge The Life of John Marshall, 4 vols. 1921 Edward Bok The Americanization of Edward Bok: The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After 1922 Hamlin Garland A Daughter of the Middle Border 1923 Burton J. Hendrick The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page 1924 Michael I. Pupin From Immigrant to Inventor 1925 M. A. De Wolfe Howe Barrett Wendell and His Letters 1926 Harvey Cushing The Life of Sir William Osler, 2 vols. 1927 Emory Holloway Whitman 1928 Charles Edward Russell The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas 1929 Burton J. Hendrick The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page 1930 Marquis James The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston 1931 Henry James Char About the Award
Since 1996, the National Biography Award has celebrated excellence in biography, autobiography and memoir writing. With a prize pool of $42,000, it is the nation’s richest prize for Australian biographical writing and memoir:
• $25,000 for the winner
• $2,000 for each of the six shortlisted authors
• $5,000 Michael Crouch Award for a first published biography, autobiography or memoir by an Australian writer
The Award is supported by the State Library of NSW Foundation. This year, we acknowledge the generous support of the Graham & Charlene Bradley Foundation, Sarah Crouch and the John Lamble Foundation.- 2025 Judges
Sylvia Martin
Panel Chair
Dr Sylvia Martin is the author of three biographies of women who have been neglected in Australian literary and cultural history, and who today might identify as lesbian or queer. Ida Leeson: A life was awarded the 2008 Magarey Medal for Biography and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the Nita B Kibble Award. Her book of memoir essays Sky Swimming: Reflections on auto/biography, people and place was published in 2020. She has published widely in literary and academic journals and reviews books for major journals and newspapers.
Lech Blaine
Lech Blaine is a writer and journalist from Queensland. He is the author of Australian Gospel and Car Crash, which was shortlisted for the National Biography Award. He has written twice for Quarterly Essay: ‘Top Blokes’ and ‘Bad Cop’. Lech was the 2023 Charles Perkins Centre writer in residence.
Eda Gunaydin
Dr Eda Gunaydin is a Turkish-Australian writer and researcher. Her debut essay collection Root & Branch: Essays on inheritance won the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction and was shortlisted for an Australian Book Industry Award. Her short stories and creative non-fiction have appeared in HEAT, Sy
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