On June 23, concurrent with the opening of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize competition, the board responsible for administering the Pulitzer Prizes announced that a new category “for a distinguished memoir or autobiography by an American author” has been formed and that the first prize in the category would be bestowed in the 2023 awards cycle. This has major positive ramifications for biographers, as until this development, memoirs and autobiographies were combined within the “Biography Prize” category. In the last seven years, since 2016, a memoir has won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography three times. Also since 2016, of the 21 books named as finalists for the Biography Prize, six have been memoirs (about 29%). And in 2017, all three finalists for the Biography Prize (and thus, the subsequent winner) were memoirs.  

Following the latter, in 2017 BIO, under the leadership of then-President Will Swift, lobbied the Pulitzer Board to separate the biography and memoir categories. Current BIO president, Linda Leavell, said of that effort, “We never got a response but it’s gratifying that they finally made the change.”  

Kai Bird, BIO Board member and executive director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at CUNY, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, along with his co-author, the late Martin J. Sherwin, for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Alfred A. Knopf). Bird also was a juror for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Concerning the new developments, he said, “Biography is not memoir. . . . Biographies will now be judged against other real biographies—the books with footnotes!” 

Biography is one of the original categories established by the Pulitzer Prize Board in 1917. “After years of considering [memoirs and autobiographies] alongside distinguished biographies and other nonfiction, and, at the urging of some nominating jurors, the Pulitzer Board felt it was time for each genre to have its own prize category,” said Marjorie Miller, administrator of the prizes, in a press release.  

Those who practice the art and craft of memoir writing are also likely to be relieved to have a separate category for their genre going forward. BIO member Amanda Vaill said of the development, “The best apples shouldn’t have to compete with the best oranges.” Read more about the decision here.