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

YearWinnerWinning work
2024Cristina Rivera Garza—
2024Ilyon Woo—
2023Beverly Gage—
2022Winfred Rembert—
2022Erin Kelly—
2021Les Payne—
2021The Dead Are Arising—
2021Tamara Payne—
2019The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke—
2019Jeffrey C. Stewart—
2018Caroline Fraser—
2017Hisham Matar—
2016Barbarian 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