BIO is accepting applications for the Hazel Rowley Prize. The prize rewards a first-time biographer with: funding (the $2,000 award); a careful reading from an established agent; one year’s membership in BIO (along with registration to the annual Biographers International
Organization Conference); and publicity for the author and project through the BIO website, The Biographer’s Craft newsletter, etc. The prize is a way for BIO To advance its mission and extend its reach to talented new practitioners.

The prize is open to all first-time biographers anywhere in the world who are writing in English; who are working on a biography that has not been commissioned, contracted, or self-published; and who have never published a book-length biography, history, or work of narrative nonfiction. Biography is defined for this prize as a narrative of an individual’s life or the story of a group of lives. Innovative ways of treating a life (or lives) will be considered at the committee’s discretion. Memoirs, however, are not eligible.

Learn more about the prize and the application process here.