Hatchards and the Biographers’ Club have announced the shortlist for the Hatchards Best First Biography Prize 2024.
Ashley John-Baptiste, Looked After: A Childhood in Care (Hodder)
A story of inner resilience that enabled the author to survive and flourish after a turbulent childhood.
Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell, These Heavy Black Bones (Canongate)
The first Black woman ever to swim for Great Britain tells the story of her sporting career and of how she walked away from it all.
Catherine Coldstream, Cloistered: My Years As a Nun (Chatto)
Catherine Coldstream found strength and meaning in the ancient ways of life to which the tight-knit community of women at Akenside Priory were dedicated – yet behind closed doors, all was not as it seemed.
Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare (Canongate)
Lockdown, for Chloe Dalton, meant exchanging her city life for the countryside. She soon found herself the custodian of a newborn hare, whose survival became her responsibility.
Michael Nott, Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life (Faber)
Drawing on letters, diaries, interviews and on Gunn’s work, Michael Nott explores the intersection between artistry and lived experience.
Michael Sheridan, The Red Emperor: Xi Jinping and His New China (Headline Press)
Veteran foreign correspondent Michael Sheridan leads us deep into the politics of modern China by recording Xi’s journey to power – a journey that featured murder, corruption and scandal.
The judges are Tom Baily (Hatchards), Telegraph books editor Iona McLaren, and Sarah Watling, author of Noble Savages: The Olivier Sisters, Four Lives in Seven Fragments and Tomorrow Perhaps the Future: Writers, Rebels and the Spanish Civil War. They will announce the winner of the £2,500 prize at a ceremony at Maggs Bros on Tuesday 4 March.
Hatchards has succeeded literary quarterly Slightly Foxed as sponsor of the prize, which was won last year by Daniel Finkelstein for Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad (William Collins).
Photo from left: Chloe Dalton, Ashley John-Baptiste, Michael Sheridan, Michael Nott, Catherine Coldstream. Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell was away.
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