The Hatchards & Biographers’ Club First Biography Prize

ABOUT THE PRIZE

The prize awards £2,500 to the best biography or memoir published that year, and has been won in recent years by Matthew Cobb, Michael Nott, Daniel Finkelstein, Katherine Rundell and Osman Yousefzada, Lea Ypi, Heather Clark, Jonathan Phillips, Bart van Es, Edmund Gordon and Hisham Matar. 

The judges for 2026 are:

Tom Baily, who has worked at Hatchards bookshop for over five years and is currently the manager of customer services and client relationships. He is particularly interested in Biography and Memoir. 

Bart van Es is the author of The Cut Out Girl (2018) which won the 2018 Slightly Foxed Biographers’ Club Best First Biography Prize and the Costa Book of the Year Award. He will publish a life of St Augustine in January 2027. He is Professor of English Literature at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. 

Sara Wheeler’s prizewinning travel books and biographies include Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard (‘Superb’ -– Guardian) and The Magnetic North: Travels in the Arctic (‘Exceptional’ – New York Times). Faber publishes her eagerly awaited authorised biography of Jan Morris in April 2026.  Wheeler is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Submissions for the 2026 Prize – Now Open!

Deadline

30th October 2026

Fee

The fee of £25 per title, payable by cheque or by bank transfer (see below) 

Location 

The 2026 Prize will be awarded in March 2027 at a party at Hatchards, Piccadilly. 

Requirements for 2026

Publishers must arrange for the short-listed authors to be at the prize-giving party if at all possible; if not, a statement/video link is to be provided.

Books must have a publication date between 1st January 2026 and 31st December 2026

The author must be resident in the UK

If paying by bank transfer, please contact Prize Administrator Ariane Bankes for bank details at: [email protected]. Cheques should be made out to The Biographers’ Club and enclosed with submissions.

Three copies of each title should be submitted no later than 31st October 2026
(please enclose press release to confirm publication date) along with an entry form (see below) and entry fee of £25 per title.

Books to be sent by post (not courier) to Jane Mays, 21 Marsden Street, London NW5 3HE

Only entries submitted by publishers will be accepted for consideration. Literary memoirs are also eligible, but the following genres are NOT eligible: celebrity autobiographies and ghostwritten books.