Literary award · United States · since 1917
Pulitzer Prize for Biography
American award for distinguished biographies. Established 1917 in United States.
About Pulitzer Prize for Biography
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 receive US$15,000. 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. It is one of the original Pulitzers. The program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year.
From the Wikipedia article “Pulitzer Prize for Biography”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Recent winners
| Year | Winner | Winning work |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Cristina Rivera Garza | — |
| 2024 | Ilyon Woo | — |
| 2023 | Beverly Gage | — |
| 2022 | Winfred Rembert | — |
| 2022 | Erin Kelly | — |
| 2021 | Les Payne | — |
| 2021 | The Dead Are Arising | — |
| 2021 | Tamara Payne | — |
| 2019 | The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke | — |
| 2019 | Jeffrey C. Stewart | — |
| 2018 | Caroline Fraser | — |
| 2017 | Hisham Matar | — |
| 2016 | Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life | — |
From Wikidata; the list may be incomplete for some years.
Eligibility and entering
Check the official rules of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for the current eligibility window, accepted formats, residency or language requirements and any entry fee. For most established prizes the publisher submits on the author's behalf, often with a limit on entries per imprint.
If you are self-published, look for an explicit statement that independently published books are accepted, and budget for entry fees and copies for judges.
Sources & data
- Structured data from Wikidata Q285117 (CC0).
- Summary text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).