The Plutarch Award, established in 2013, is an annual literary award for biographies presented by the Biographers International Organization. It is named in honor of Plutarch, the Greek historian who is credited as the father of biography.
| Year | Author(s) | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Robert Caro | The Passage of Power | Winner | [1] |
| Deirdre Bair | Saul Steinberg: A Biography | Nominee | [2] [3] | |
| Lisa Cohen | All We Know: Three Lives | Nominee | [2] [3] | |
| Timothy Egan | Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis | Nominee | [2] [3] | |
| Alice Kessler-Harris | A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman | Nominee | [2] [3] | |
| David Maraniss | Barack Obama: The Story | Nominee | [2] [3] | |
| John Matteson | The Lives of Margaret Fuller | Nominee | [2] [3] | |
| Tom Reiss | The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo | Nominee | [2] [3] | |
| William Souder | On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson | Nominee | [2] [3] | |
| Rachel L. Swarns | American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama | Nominee | [2] [3] | |
| 2014 | Linda Leavell | Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore | Winner | [4] |
| Scott Anderson | Lawrence in Arabia | Nominee | [5] | |
| Marie Arana | Bolivar: American Liberator | Nominee | [5] | |
| A. Scott Berg | Wilson | Nominee | [5] | |
| Ben Bradlee Jr. | The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams | Nominee | [5] | |
| Leo Damrosch | Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World | Nominee | [5] | |
| Lucy Hughes-Hallett | Gabriele D'Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War | Nominee | [5] | |
| Brian Jay Jones | Jim Henson: The Biography | Nominee | [5] | |
| Jill Lepore | Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin | Nominee | [5] | |
| Ray Monk | Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center | Nominee | [5] | |
| 2015 | Hermione Lee | Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life | Winner | [6] |
| Helen Rappaport | The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandria | Finalist | [6] | |
| Nigel Hamilton | The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942 | Finalist | [6] | |
| John Lahr | Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh | Finalist | [6] | |
| 2016 | Rosemary Sullivan | Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva | Winner | |
| Sonia Purnell | Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill | Nominee | [7] | |
| T. J. Stiles | Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America | Nominee | [7] | |
| Jay Parini | Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal | Nominee | [7] | |
| Anne Heller | Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times | Nominee | [7] | |
| Emily Bingham | Irrepressible: A Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham | Nominee | [7] | |
| Betty Boyd Caroli | Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage | Nominee | [7] | |
| Irwin F. Gellman | The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon 1952-1961 | Nominee | [7] | |
| Cathy Curtis | Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter | Nominee | [7] | |
| Peter Guralnick | Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll | Nominee | [7] | |
| 2017 | Ruth Franklin | Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life | Winner | [8] |
| Frances Wilson | Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey | Finalist | [9] | |
| Volker Ullrich , trans. by Jefferson Chase | Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 | Finalist | [9] | |
| Louisa Thomas | Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams | Finalist | [9] | |
| Larry Tye | Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon | Nominee | [10] | |
| Alex Beam | The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, and the End of a Beautiful Friendship | Nominee | [10] | |
| Joseph Lelyveld | His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt | Nominee | [10] | |
| Ruth Scurr | John Aubrey, My Own Life | Nominee | [10] | |
| Reiner Stach , trans. by Shelley Frisch | Kafka: The Early Years | Nominee | [10] | |
| Simon Callow | Orson Welles, Volume 3: One-Man Band | Nominee | [10] | |
| 2018 | Caroline Fraser | Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder | Winner | |
| Ron Chernow | Grant | Nominee | [11] | |
| Jonathan Eig | Ali: A Life | Nominee | [11] | |
| John Farrell | Richard Nixon: The Life | Nominee | [11] | |
| Andrzej Franaszek , trans. by Aleksandra Parker and Michael Parker | Milosz: A Biography | Nominee | [11] | |
| Francine Klagsbrun | Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel | Nominee | [11] | |
| Megan Marshall | Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast | Nominee | [11] | |
| Rosalind Rosenberg | Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray | Nominee | [11] | |
| Victor Sebestyen | Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror | Nominee | [11] | |
| William Taubman | Gorbachev: His Life and Times | Nominee | [11] | |
| 2019 | David W. Blight | Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom | Winner | |
| Craig Brown | Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret | Nominee | [12] | |
| Julie Dobrow | After Emily: Two Remarkable Women and the Legacy of America's Greatest Poet | Nominee | [12] | |
| Lindsey Hilsum | In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin | Nominee | [12] | |
| Victor Sebestyen | Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History | Nominee | [12] | |
| David Levering Lewis | The Improbable Wendell Wilkie: The Businessman Who Saved the Republican Party and Conceived a New World Order | Nominee | [12] | |
| Patricia O'Toole | The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made | Nominee | [12] | |
| Andrew Roberts | Churchill: Walking with Destiny | Nominee | [12] | |
| Hilary Spurling | Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time | Nominee | [12] | |
| Jeffrey C. Stewart | The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke | Nominee | [12] | |
| 2020 | Sonia Purnell | A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II | Winner | [13] [14] |
| Sidney Blumenthal | All the Powers of Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1856-1860 | Finalist | [15] | |
| Jacquelyn Dowd Hall | Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America | Finalist | [15] | |
| Charles King | Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century | Finalist | [15] | |
| George Packer | Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century | Finalist | [15] | |
| 2021 | A. N. Wilson | The Mystery of Charles Dickens | Winner | [16] [17] |
| Les Payne and Tamara Payne | The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X | Finalist | [18] | |
| Jonathan Alter | His Very Best: Jimmy Carter: A Life | Finalist | [18] | |
| Ted Widmer | Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington | Finalist | [18] | |
| Martha Ackmann | These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson | Finalist | [18] | |
| Steven Heyman | The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution | Longlist | [19] | |
| Hilary Holladay | The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography | Longlist | [19] | |
| David S. Reynolds | Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times | Longlist | [19] | |
| Steven C. Smith | Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood's Most Influential Composer | Longlist | [19] | |
| Volker Ullrich , trans. by Jefferson Chase | Hitler: Downfall 1939-1945 | Longlist | [19] | |
| 2022 | Frances Wilson | Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence | Winner | [20] |
| Rebecca Donner | All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler | Shortlist | [21] | |
| Robert Elder | Calhoun: American Heretic | Shortlist | [21] | |
| Fiona Sampson | Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Shortlist | [21] | |
| Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan | Francis Bacon: Revelations | Shortlist | [21] | |
| Claude A. Clegg III | The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama | Longlist | [22] | |
| Janice P. Nimura | The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine | Longlist | [22] | |
| Matthew Sturgis | Oscar Wilde: A Life | Longlist | [22] | |
| Dorothy Wickenden | The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights | Longlist | [22] | |
| Richard Zenith | Pessoa: A Biography | Longlist | [22] | |
| 2023 | Jennifer Homans | Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century | Winner | [23] [24] |
| Beverly Gage | G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century | Shortlist | [25] | |
| Jon Meacham | And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle | Shortlist | [25] | |
| Jane Ridley | George V: Never a Dull Moment | Shortlist | [25] | |
| Katherine Rundell | Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne | Shortlist | [25] | |
| Tomiko Brown-Nagin | Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality | Longlist | [26] | |
| John A. Farrell | Ted Kennedy: A Life | Longlist | [26] | |
| Paul Fisher | The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World | Longlist | [26] | |
| Stacy Schiff | The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams | Longlist | [26] | |
| Miranda Seymour | I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys | Longlist | [26] | |
| 2024 | Yepoka Yeebo | Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World | Winner | [27] [28] |
| Jonathan Eig | King: A Life | Shortlist | [29] | |
| Howard Fishman | To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse | Shortlist | [29] | |
| Lisa M. Hamilton | The Hungry Season: A Journey of War, Love, and Survival | Shortlist | [29] | |
| Prudence Peiffer | The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever | Shortlist | [29] | |
| Sally H. Jacobs | Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson | Nominee | [30] | |
| Larry Rohter | Into the Amazon: The Life of Cândido Rondon, Trailblazing Explorer, Scientist, Statesman, and Conservationist | Nominee | [30] | |
| Barbara D. Savage | Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar | Nominee | [30] | |
| Willard Spiegelman | Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt | Nominee | [30] | |
| Jonny Steinberg | Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage | Nominee | [30] | |
| 2025 | Max Boot | Reagan: His Life and Legend | Longlist | [31] |
| Cynthia Carr | Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar | Longlist | [31] | |
| Margalit Fox | The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss | Longlist | [31] | |
| Stephanie Gorton | The Icon & the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America | Longlist | [31] | |
| David Greenberg | John Lewis: A Life, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs for Survival Is A Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde | Longlist | [31] | |
| Lucy Hughes-Hallett | The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham | Longlist | [31] | |
| Heath Hardage Lee | The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady | Longlist | [31] | |
| Adam Shatz | The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon | Longlist | [31] | |
| Jackie Wullschläger | Monet: The Restless Vision | Longlist | [31] |