Biographers International Organization

The 2025 Hazel Rowley Prize, honoring the best book proposal by a first-time biographer, has been awarded to Liz Schott, who is working on a biography of Dorothy Wright Liebes. Liebes was renowned for textile design, color artistry, and experimentation with innovative fibers from the mid-1930s until her death in 1972. She dominated women’s magazines, was featured in newsreels, television, and radio programs, and created the “Liebes Look,” a modern aesthetic we still embrace without… Read More »

Mary Chapman and Rebecca Roberts are the winners of the 2025 Robert and Ina Caro Travel Fellowships for travel. They will receive $5,000 each for research trips to archives or other significant locations in their subjects’ lives. Chapman is writing Go-Away Girls: How an Enslaved Chinese Child Acrobat Inspired Her Daughter, Sui Sin Far, and Asian American Literature, a dual biography of Edith Eaton and her mother, which sheds light on their pioneering strategies… Read More »

Biographers International Organization (BIO) announced today that two books would share its 2025 Plutarch Award for the Best Biography of 2024. The winners are Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett (Harper). The Plutarch is the only international prize of its kind as it’s selected by a committee of five distinguished biographers, chaired this year by… Read More »

A distinguished panel of judges from the Biographers International Organization (BIO) is proud to announce the five books shortlisted for the 2025 Plutarch Award, the only international literary award for biography judged exclusively by biographers. These five biographies uphold the high standard set by earlier Plutarch winners for the quality of research, the literary merit of the writing, and the originality and significance of the project. This year’s five shortlisted titles and detailed information are… Read More »

Shennette Garrett-Scott and Fara Dabhoiwala are the recipients of the 2025 Frances “Frank” Rollin Fellowship, awarded for biographical works-in-progress that significantly advance our understanding of the Black experience. The selection committee was particularly struck by the engaging clarity of their prose and how these distinguished academics bring complex histories vividly to life for a broad readership. Garrett-Scott won for her project, Titan: The Life of Maggie Lena Walker, a biography of the pioneering early… Read More »

Dawn Porter has been awarded the 2025 BIO Award, an honor bestowed annually by the Biographers International Organization, to a distinguished colleague who has made significant contributions to the art and craft of biography. Porter is an acclaimed American documentary filmmaker and founder of Trilogy Films, known for her storytelling on social justice, history, and cultural icons. Her celebrated documentaries, including Trapped, John Lewis: Good Trouble, and The Lady Bird Diaries, air… Read More »

Registration for the 2025 BIO Conference is now open. Co-sponsored with the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the two-day event will occur both in person and online June 5-6, 2025, at The National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Please note: topic-specific roundtables, which have traditionally been held during lunch the second day of the conference, will be held virtually one week before the conference. Attending in person provides rich opportunities for socializing with fellow… Read More »

  The 2025 Plutarch Award longlist has been decided. This year’s award committee consists of BIO members Ruth Franklin (chair), Vanda Krefft, Lance Richardson, David Maraniss, and Lisa Napoli. “The 2025 Plutarch Committee reviewed close to 150 books by first-time and experienced biographers, issued by major presses and small academic publishers, on subjects who made their lives in worlds as different as ancient Rome and modern-day Hollywood,” says Franklin. “Many took the traditional cradle-to-grave approach;… Read More »