The Biographers’ Club Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2021, worth £2,500, is generously sponsored by Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader’s Quarterly.
The Prize will be awarded to the best book by a first-time biographer, as chosen by our three judges. Susannah Clapp has been the theatre critic of The Observer since 1997, helped to set up the London Review of Books and is the author of books about Bruce Chatwin and Angela Carter. Horatio Clare is the author of several prize-winning titles that range between travel and memoir, the latest being Heavy Light: a story of madness, mania and healing. John de Falbe has been one of the directors of John Sandoe (Books) Ltd, an independent bookshop in Chelsea, since 1989. He is also the author of three novels and was for some years a regular reviewer for the Spectator.
Only entries submitted by publishers will be accepted for consideration. Literary memoirs are also eligible, but the following are NOT eligible: celebrity autobiographies, books in translation and ghostwritten books.
To qualify, books must be first published in the UK and have a publication date between 1st January 2021 and 31st December 2021 (proofs are acceptable). Three copies of each book should be submitted no later than 31st October (please enclose the press release to confirm the publication date) along with an entry form (downloadable from the website) and an entry fee of £25 per title. Books to be sent by post (NOT courier) to: Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, c/o Jane Mays, 21 Marsden Street, London NW5 3HE.
NB: submissions received without entry form or fee will be discounted.
The Prize will be awarded in March 2022
Previous Winners: 2013 – Charles Moore for Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (Allen Lane); 2014 – Claudia Renton for Those Wild Wyndhams: Three Sisters at the Heart of Power (William Collins); 2015 – Alan Cumming for Not My Father’s Son (Canongate); 2016 – Hisham Matar for The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between (Viking); 2017 – Edmund Gordon for The Invention of Angela Carter (Chatto); 2018 – Bart van Es, for The Cut-Out Girl (Fig Tree, Penguin); 2019 – Jonathan Phillips, The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin (Bodley Head); 2020 – Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Cape)
For further details of our three prizes visit www.thebiographersclub.com.
For queries contact Ariane Bankes, 07985 920341; [email protected]