We are open for submissions for this year’s Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, generously sponsored by Slightly Foxed.
We are delighted to have the following judges:
Philip Eade is the author of three biographies, Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters (2007), Young Prince Philip (2011) and Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited (2016), all of which appeared in The Sunday Times’s ten best biographies of the year; the last two were also Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. He has been a regular obituarist for Daily Telegraph for the past 25 years, and a more occasional book reviewer.
Sue Gaisford reviewed non-fiction for the Economist for twenty years before moving to The Independent. She now reviews for the Financial Times and the Tablet, where she became Literary Editor. She has taken part in judging the Authors’ Club best first novel award and taught workshops in memoir, autobiography and non-fiction writing. Her own memoir is a work in progress.
Clare Mulley is an award-winning author and broadcaster, primarily focused on female experience during the Second World War. Her three books, The Woman Who Saved the Children, The Spy Who Loved and The Women Who Flew for Hitler, are all under option and widely translated. Recent television includes two series of the BBC’s Rise of the Nazis, and several series for Channel 5, Channel 4 and Sky History. Clare writes and reviews for various papers including the Spectator and TLS, and has twice been chair of the judges for the Historical Writers Association non-fiction prize. She is a recipient of the Bene Merito cultural honour of the Republic of Poland, and the Daily Mail Biographers Club Prize.
Deadline: 31st October 2023
Books must have a publication date between 1st January 2023 and 31st December 2023 (proofs are acceptable). Three copies of each book should be submitted no later than 31st October (please enclose press release to confirm publication date) along with an entry form (downloadable from the website) and entry fee of £25 per title payable by bank transfer. Books to be sent by post (not courier): One copy to Sarah Anderson, Flat 103 Battersea Place, 73 Albert Bridge Rd, London SW11 4DT. Two copies to Bruce Hunter, 83 Darwin Court, London NW1 7BQ. NB: submissions received without entry form or fee will be discounted.
The Prize will be awarded in March 2024
Previous Winners: 2014 – Claudia Renton, Those Wild Wyndhams: Three Sisters at the Heart of Power (William Collins); 2015 – Alan Cumming, Not My Father’s Son (Canongate); 2016 – Hisham Matar, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between (Viking); 2017 – Edmund Gordon, The Invention of Angela Carter (Chatto); 2018 – Bart van Es, The Cut-Out Girl (Fig Tree, Penguin); 2019 – Jonathan Phillips, The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin (Bodley Head); 2020 – Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Cape); 2022 – Lea Ypi, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (Allen Lane); 2023 – Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (Faber) and Osman Yousefzada, The Go-Between (Canongate)