Plutarch Award

BOSTON, MA—Biographers will once again determine the best biography of the year when they bestow the Plutarch Award at a gala ceremony in Boston on May 17. Named after the famous Ancient Greek biographer, the prize aims to be the genre’s equivalent of the Oscar, in that the winner is determined by secret ballot from a list of nominees selected by a committee of distinguished members of the craft.

The 2013 books nominated for this year’s Plutarch are:

• Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson (Doubleday)
• Bolivar: American Liberator by Marie Arana (Simon & Schuster)
• Wilson by A. Scott Berg (Putnam)
• The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams by Ben Bradlee, Jr. (Little,Brown)
• Jonathan Swift: His Life And His World by Leo Damrosch (Yale)
• Gabriele D’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War by Lucy Hughes-Hallet (Knopf)
• Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones (Ballantine)
• Holding On Upside Down: The Life And Work of Marianne Moore by Linda Leavell (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore (Knopf)
• Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center by Ray Monk (Doubleday)

“This is the only prize to be awarded to a biographer by biographers,” said BIO President James McGrath Morris. “Just as each year science fiction readers await the announcement of the Nebula, horror readers await the Stoker, and mystery fans await the Edgar, biography readers have now come to see the Plutarch as a similarly prestigious and much-sought-after award.”

The Plutarch Award winner will be revealed at BIO’s annual Compleat Biographer Conference at the University of Massachusetts Boston on May 17, which attracts hundreds of biographers from around the globe.