Awards & Fellowships
The Plutarch Award
About the Award
Named after the famous ancient Greek biographer, the Plutarch Award honors the best biography of the year as selected by a committee of distinguished biographers.
It is the only international literary award for biography judged exclusively by biographers. As of 2025, the Plutarch comes with a $3,000 honorarium. The winner is announced at the annual BIO conference.
Submit a Nomination
- 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.
Past Winners
2026
Nicholas Boggs
James Baldwin: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2026 Finalists:
Nicholas Boggs, James Baldwin: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Howard W. French, The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright Publishing)
Max Perry Mueller, Wakara’s America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West (Basic Books)
Francesca Wade, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife (Scribner)
Graham Watson, The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: A New Life (Pegasus Books)
2025
Cynthia Carr
Co-winner
Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2025 Finalists:
Cynthia Carr, Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Stephanie Gorton, The Icon & the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America (HarperCollins)
David Greenberg, John Lewis: A Life (Simon & Schuster)
Lucy Hughes-Hallett, The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham (Harper)
Adam Shatz, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon (Macmillan)
2025
Lucy Hughes-Hallet
Co-winner
The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham (Harper)
2025 Finalists:
Cynthia Carr, Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Stephanie Gorton, The Icon & the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America (HarperCollins)
David Greenberg, John Lewis: A Life (Simon & Schuster)
Lucy Hughes-Hallett, The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham (Harper)
Adam Shatz, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon (Macmillan)
2024
Yepoka Yeebo
Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World (Bloomsbury)
2024 Finalists:
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)
Prudence Peiffer, The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever (HarperCollins)
Yepoka Yeebo, Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World (Bloomsbury)
2023
Jennifer Homans
Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (Random House)
2023 Finalists:
Beverly Gage, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century (Viking)
Jennifer Homans, Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (Random House)
Jon Meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (Random House)
Jane Ridley, George V: Never a Dull Moment (HarperCollins)
Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2022
Frances Wilson
Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2022 Finalists:
Rebecca Donner, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler (Little, Brown & Co.)
Robert Elder, Calhoun: American Heretic (Basic Books)
Fiona Sampson, Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (W. W. Norton)
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, Francis Bacon: Revelations (Knopf)
Frances Wilson, Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2021
A. N. Wilson
The Mystery of Charles Dickens (Harper)
2021 Finalists:
Martha Ackmann, These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson (W. W. Norton)
Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life (Simon & Schuster)
Les and Tamara Payne, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X (W. W. Norton)
Ted Widmer, Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington (Simon & Schuster)
A. N. Wilson, The Mystery of Charles Dickens (HarperCollins)
2020
Sonia Purnell
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II (Viking/Penguin)
2020 Finalists
Sidney Blumenthal, All The Powers of Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1856–1860 (Simon & Schuster)
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America (W. W. Norton)
Charles King, Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century (Doubleday)
George Packer, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (Knopf)
Sonia Purnell, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II (Viking)
2019
David W. Blight
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (Simon & Schuster)
2019 Finalists
David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
Julie Dobrow, After Emily: Two Remarkable Women and the Legacy of America’s Greatest Poet (W. W. Norton)
Lindsey Hilsum, In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (Viking)
2018
Caroline Fraser
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Metropolitan/Henry Holt)
2018 Finalists
Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Metropolitan Books)
Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
John A. Farrell, Richard Nixon: The Life (Doubleday)
Victor Sebestyen, Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror (Pantheon)
2017
Ruth Franklin
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Liveright)
2017 Finalists
Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (W. W. Norton)
Frances Wilson, Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Volker Ullrich (translated by Jefferson Chase), Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939 (Knopf)
Louisa Thomas, Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams (Penguin Press)
2016
Rosemary Sullivan
Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva (Harper)
2016 Finalists
Rosemary Sullivan, Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva (Harper)
Irwin F. Gellman, The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961 (Yale University Press)
Peter Guralnick, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll (Little, Brown and Company)
T.J. Stiles, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America (Alfred A. Knopf)
2015
Hermione Lee
Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life (Knopf)
2015 Finalists
Hermione Lee, Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life (Knopf)
Helen Rappaport, The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra (St. Martin’s Press)
Nigel Hamilton, The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941–1942 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (W. W. Norton)
2014
Linda Leavell
Holding On Upside Down: The Life And Work of Marianne Moore (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
2014 Finalists
Linda Leavell, Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (Knopf)
Brian Jay Jones, Jim Henson: The Biography (Ballantine Books)
Ray Monk, Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center (Random House)
2013
Robert Caro
The Passage of Power (Knopf)
2013 Finalists
Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV (Knopf)
Alice Kessler-Harris, A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (Bloomsbury Press)
John Matteson, The Lives of Margaret Fuller (W. W. Norton & Company)
Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (Crown)