Pulitzer Prize: biography, memoir, autobiography

In his will, publisher Joseph Pulitzer provided funding to create the Pulitzer Prize. The prize for biography formerly honored "a distinguished biography, autobiography or memoir by an American author," but memoir and autobiography are now honored as a separate category, with their own prize.

BIOGRAPHY (2023 to the present)

2024: King: A Life, by Jonathan Eig; and Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, by Ilyon Woo

2023: G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, by Beverly Gage (biography); and Stay True, by Hua Hsu (memoir or autobiography)

AUTOBIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  (2023 to the present)

2024: Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice, by Cristina Rivera Garza

2023: Stay True, by Hua Hsu

BIOGRAPHY/AUTOBIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR (1917-2022) 

2022: Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South, by Winfred Rembert, as told to Erin I. Kelly

2021: The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, by Les Payne and Tamara Payne

2020: Sontag: Her Life and Work, by Benjamin Moser

2019: The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, by Jeffrey C. Stewart

2018: Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser

2017: The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, by Hisham Matar

2016: Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, by William Finnegan

2015: The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the rise of Fascism in Europe, by David I. Kertzer

2014: Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, by Megan Marshall

2013: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss

2012: George F. Kennan: A Life, by Ron Chernow

2011: Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow

2010: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, by T.J. Stiles

2009: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, by Jon Meecham

2008: Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father, by John Matteson

2007: The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, by Debby Applegate

2006: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

2005: de Kooning: An American Master, by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan

2004: Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, by William Tubman

2003: Master of the Senate, by Robert A. Caro

2002: John Adams, by David McCullough

2001: W.E.B. DuBois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963, by David Levering Lewis

2000: Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), by Stacy Schiff

1999: Lindbergh, by A. Scott Berg

1998: Personal History, by Katharine Graham

1997: Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir, by Frank McCourt

1996: God: A Biography, by Jack Miles

1995: Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, by Joan D. Hedrick

1994: W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919, by David Levering Lewis

1993: Truman, by David McCullough

1992: Fortunate Son: The Healing of a Vietnam Vet, by Lewis B. Puller

1991: Jackson Pollock, by Steveb Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

1990: Machiavelli in Hell, by Sebastian de Grazia

1989: Oscar Wilde, by Richard Ellman

1988: Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe, by David Herbert Donald

1987: Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, by David J. Garrow

1986: Louise Bogan: A Portrait, by Elizabeth Frank

1985: The Life and times of Cotton Mather, by Kenneth Silverman

1984: Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915, by Louis R. Harlan

1983: Growing Up, by Russell Baker

1982: Grant: A Biography, by William McFeely

1981: Peter the Great: His Life and World, by Robert K. Massie

1980: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris

1979: Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews, by Leonard Baker

1978: Samuel Johnson, by Walter Jackson Bate

1977: A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence, by John E. Mack

1976: Edith Wharton: A Biography, by R.W.B. Lewis

1975: The Power Brokers: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, by Robert Caro

1974: O’Neill, Son and Artist, by Louis Shearer

1973: Luce and His Empire, by W.A. Swan berg

1972: Eleanor and Franklin, by Joseph P. Lash

1971: Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915-1938, by Lawrence Thompson

1970: Huey Long, by T. Harry Williams

1969: The Man From New York: John Quinn and His Friends, by Benjamin Lawrence Reid

1968: Memoirs, by George F. Kennan

1967: Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, by Justin Kaplan

1966: A Thousand Days, by Arthur M. Schlesinger

1965: Henry Adams, three volumes, by Ernest Samuels

1964: John Keats, by Walter Jackson Bate

1963: Henry James, by Leon Edel

1961: Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, by David Donald

1960: John Paul Jones, by Samuel Eliot Morison

1959: Woodrow Wilson, by Arthur Walworth

1958: George Washington, Volumes I-VII, by Douglas Southall Freeman with John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth

1957: Profiles in Courage, by John F. kennedy

1956: Benjamin Henry Latrobe, by Talbot Faulkner Hamlin

1955: The Taft Story, by William S. White

1954: The Spirit of St. Louis, by Charles A. Lindbergh

1953: Edmund Pendleton 1721-1803, by David J. Mays

1952: Charles Evans Hughes, by Merlo J. Pusey

1951: John C. Calhoun: American Portrait, by Margaret Louise Coit

1950: John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, by Samuel Flagg Bemis

1949: Roosevelt and Hopkins, by Robert E. Sherwood

1948: Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow, by Margaret Clapp

1947: The Autobiography of William Allen White, by William Allen White

1946: Son of the Wilderness, by Linnie Marsh

1945: George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel, by Russell Blaine

1944: The American Leonardo: The Life of Samuel F.B. Morse, by Carleton Mabee

1943: Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, by Samuel Eliot Morison

1942: Crusader in Crinoline, by Forrest Wilson

1941: Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758: A Biography, by Ola Elizabeth Winslow

1940: Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters, Vols. VII and VIII, by Ray Stannard Baker

1939: Benjamin Franklin, by Carl Van Doren

1938: Pedlar’s Progress, by Odell Shepard; The Life of Andrew Jackson, by Marquis James

1937: Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration, by Allan Nevins

1936: The Thought and Character of William James: As Revealed in Unpublished Correspondence and Notes, Together with His Published Writings, by Ralph Barton

1935: R.E. Lee, by Douglas S. Freeman

1934: John Hay, by Tyler Dennett

1933: Grover Cleveland, by Allan Nevins

1932: Theodore Roosevelt, by Henry F. Pringle

1931: Charles W. Eliot, by Henry James

1930: The Raven, by Marquis James

1929: The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, by Burton J. Hendrick

1928: The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas, by Charles Edward Russell

1927: Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative, by Emory Holloway

1926: The Life of Sir William Osler, 2 vols., by Harvey Cushing

1925: Barrett Wendell and His Letters, by M.A. Dewolfe Howe

1924: From Immigrant to Inventor, by Michael Idvorski Pupin

1923: The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, by Burton J. Hendrick

1922: A Daughter of the Middle Border, by Hamlin Garland

1921: The Americanization of Edward Bok, by Edward Bok

1920: The Life of John Marshall, by Albert J. Beveridge

1919: The Education of Henry Adams, by Henry Adams

1918: Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, by William Cabell Bruce

1917: Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, by Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott assisted by Florence Howe Hall