The Plutarch Award

About this program

The Biographers International Organization (BIO) awards the Plutarch Award to the year’s best biography, selected by a committee of five distinguished biographers, with a $3,000 honorarium as of 2025. Eligible works must be biographies published in English, including translations, during the current calendar year and may address one or more subjects in various narrative formats. Autobiographies, memoirs, fiction, self-published works, and non-print biographies are excluded. Publishers and BIO members, including authors nominating their own work, may submit nominations by December 1.