Current biography international
The Plutarch Award
Congratulations to Yepoka Yeebo, winner of the 2024 Plutarch Award for Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World.
Eligibility:
- Biographies published in English (including in translation) during the current calendar year are eligible for nomination.
- Nominated biographies must be by an author or group of authors about another figure or figures.
- Nominated biographies may include those about two or more people, as well as those written in narrative forms other than cradle-to-grave format.
- Autobiographies, memoirs, works of fiction, self-published works, and non-print forms of biography are not eligible.
- Both publishers and BIO members may nominate books before December first of the current year.
Publishers wishing to nominate biographies should email BIO for instructions.
BIO members may nominate biographies (including their own work) by filling out the nomination form—one form per book, please. There is no limit on the number of books a member may propose.
This is a complete listing of past Plutarch Award finalists, with the winner for each year highlighted in bold.
2024
- Jonathan Eig, King: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Howard Fishman,To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse (Dutton)
- Lisa M. Hamilton, The Hungry Season: A Journey of War, Love, and Survival (Little, Brown and Company)
- Sally H. Jacobs, Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson (St. Martin’s Press)
- Prudence Peiffer, The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever (Harper)
- Larry Rohter, Into the Amazon: The Life of Cândido Rondon, Trailblazing Explorer, Scientist, Statesman, and Conservationist (W. W. Norton & Company)
- Barbara D. Savage, Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar (Yale University Press)
- Willard Spiegelman, Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt (Alfre
Kitty Kelley Dissertation Fellowship Deadline February 15
February 7th, 2025
The deadline to apply for the Kitty Kelley Dissertation Fellowship in Biography is Saturday, February 15, 2025. The fellowship, endowed by Kitty Kelley, founding member of BIO and long-time advocate for biography and biographers, provides $25,000 to a doctoral student writing a dissertation in English focused on another person’s life or the lives of two or more individuals. The winner of the scholarship will be announced no later than May 1, 2025. The… Read More »BIO partners with Troy University to Sponsor National Conference on Black Biography
January 21st, 2025
BIO will host the first major national conference on Black biography in over 40 years. Telling the Stories of Black Lives through Biography will be co-sponsored by Troy University-Montgomery, Alabama, and will take place on March 21-22, 2025. The conference will feature a full day of speakers, panel discussions, receptions, and other activities. Telling the Stories of Black Lives through Biography is the brainchild of author and longtime BIO board member Ray Anthony Shepard… Read More »Biography Lab Registration is Open!
December 11th, 2024
Biographers International Organization (BIO) is excited to announce Biography Lab 2025, its third annual online forum, which will be held via Zoom on Saturday, January 18, 2025, from 10:30 am – 5:00 pm EST. BIO invites participants at all levels of interest and experience in the craft of biography to participate in three sequential 90-minute forums led by prominent biographers and people in publishing. Free for BIO members and students. $60 General Admission. Register … Read More »BIO Announces the Kitty Kelley Dissertation Fellowship
October 15th, 2024
The Kitty Kelley Dissertation Fellowship in Biography will provide $25,000 to a doctoral student who is writing a dissertationThe British Sociological Association
The Auto/Biography Study Group brings together people interested in the analytical examination of the various kinds of biography and autobiography, the interrelations between biography, autobiography, text and lives, and the relationship between the differing genres of representing lives. The forward slash in auto/biography denotes the critical interrelationship between the self and the other, the private and public.
The Auto/Biography Study Group is a wonderful academic community and we are delighted to welcome you as either an associate or paid member. See the Join Us tab.
We look forward to meeting you soon.
Best wishes
Anne Chappell and Carly Stewart
ConvenorsThe group was established in 1992 when David Morgan and Liz Stanley convened a conference in January entitled ‘Auto/Biography in Sociology’. This was followed in October the same year when the first 'Auto/Biography' Bulletin for the group was published. In the Bulletin, auto/biography was described as:
"…the activity of attempting to render a succession of narrative moments relating to a life in such a way as to make them comprehensible to others, who in turn may complement or alter them and so become part of the auto/biographical project… Additionally, the term auto/biography demonstrates an alacrity to recognise that all biography has some impression of the biographer upon it and that no autobiography can be produced by an individual entirely ungoverned by the social. Auto/Biographies… highlight the movement between the subjective and the objective… and in doing so provide a textual space for the problem to be played out and commented upon" (Erben, Morgan and Stanley, 1992: 1-2).
There followed a special issue of the BSA’s journal Sociology in 1993 focussing on auto/biography. Subsequently, the group has continued to publish a multitude of literature (bulletins, journals and monographs) as well as convening regular international conferences. The
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