Pulitzer Prize for Biography

Organizer: The Pulitzer Prizes (Columbia University)
Why it counts: Awarded annually since 1917 by the Pulitzer Prize Board, administered by Columbia University, for distinguished biography by an American author. Known as the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography from 1917 to 2022; in 2023 the category split into this prize (Biography) and a separate new Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography. Same Wikidata item (continuous history) throughout.
Held: annual, early May, with the Pulitzer Prize announcement

Reigning winners

Year	Pulitzer Prize for Biography
2023	Beverly Gage
2022	Erin Kelly Winfred Rembert
2020	Benjamin Moser — Sontag
2019	Jeffrey C. Stewart — The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
2018	Caroline Fraser
2017	Hisham Matar
2016	William Finnegan — Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
2015	David Kertzer — The Pope and Mussolini
2014	Megan Marshall
2013	Tom Reiss
2012	John Lewis Gaddis — George F. Kennan: An American Life
2011	Ron Chernow
2010	T. J. Stiles
2009	Jon Meacham
2008	John Matteson
2007	Debby Applegate
2006	Kai Bird Martin J. Sherwin
2005	Annalyn Swan — de Kooning: An American Master Mark Stevens — de Kooning: An American Master
2004	William Taubman
2003	Robert Caro
2002	David G. McCullough — John Adams
2001	David Levering Lewis — W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919–1963
2000	Stacy Schiff
1999	A. Scott Berg
1998	Katharine Graham — Personal History
1997	Frank McCourt — Angela's Ashes
1996	Jack Miles
1995	Joan D. Hedrick
1994	David Levering Lewis — W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919
1993	David G. McCullough — Truman
1991	Gregory White Smith — Jackson Pollock: An American Saga Steven Naifeh — Jackson Pollock: An American Saga
1990	Sebastian de Grazia