I t’s been another great year for autobiographical writing. Here, we’ve put together a round-up of memoirs garlanded with literary prizes during the 2024 award season.
🏆 Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography
In this powerful memoir, the Mexican author investigates the violent death of—and memorialises the life of—her sister Liliana, who was killed in 1990 by an ex-boyfriend. The Pulitzer Prize jury described it as a "genre-bending" account "that mixes memoir, feminist investigative journalism and poetic biography stitched together with a determination born of loss."
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🏆 Winner of the 2024 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature
In this award-winning graphic memoir, creator Kate Beaton documents her time working in a modern-day oil town in Alberta, Canada—in a bid to pay off her student debts. Expect vast landscapes, colossal machinery, and culture shock amid this most male-dominated of communities. An accessible and engaging book that pairs beautifully with John Vaillant's Fire Weather ,
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“Safiya Sinclair finds poetry as a pathway out of her abusive, extremely restricted, patriarchal upbringing…Sinclair opens her book with the 1966 visit to Jamaica of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, whom the Rastafari believed was a living god…Sinclair’s father was just a toddler at the time but he was inspired by Marley’s music to join the Rastafari. Sinclair is particularly adept at bringing a personal lens to these larger historical forces and vice versa. It’s a really fascinating memoir.” Read more...
The Best Memoirs: The 2024 NBCC Autobiography Shortlist
May-lee Chai ,
Short Story Writer
🏆 Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year at the 2024 British Book Awards
In 2009, Rory Stewart—former diplomat and acclaimed travel writer—left his chair at Harvard University to run for parliament. In this searingly honest memoir, he offers an insider’s view of British politics in the age of Brexit, rolling news, and blustering Boris. Since he stood down in 2019, Stewart has rapidly become known as a political truth-teller and astute commentator—not least as co-host (with New Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell) of the hit podcast The Rest is Politics
Published in North America as How Not to Be A Politician: A Memoir.
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“Conor was on the tennis circuit. He rubbed shoulders with the greats of the game, like Roger Federer and so on, but he never quite made it. He had his moments in the spotlight, but it’s a grinding life being on the lower rungs. If you know somebody who’s got a kid who’s thinking of making tennis their career, they should read this book first because it’s not fun…There’s humour in the book, a lot of self-deprecation and insight. He’s quite open and honest. That’s one of the key things that the judging panel liked about it. He doesn’t hide anything. He clearly loves his family a lot, but they do come over as quite pushy and he accepts that you won’t achieve anything in individual sport without a pushy parent.” Read more...
The Best Sports Books of 2024: The William Hill Award
Alyson Rudd ,
Journalist
🏆 Winner of the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose
Here, Claire Dederer expands her viral Paris Review essay 'What Do We Do With the Art of Monstrous Men' into an extensive examination of whether we can appreciate literature, film, or visual arts outside of the context of its creator's life and values. Is it possible to separate the art from the artist? Nylon magazine said it was “a book that’s not afraid to say, 'I don’t know,' written by an author who isn’t afraid of her mind changing as she unpacks everything from Woody Allen’s Manhattan to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita". From the bestselling author of Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses .
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🏆 Winner of the 2024 TLS Ackerley Prize
An atmospheric memoir by the British critic Catherine Taylor offering an account of her teenage years in Sheffield, England, against a backdrop of industrial unrest and the terrors of the Yorkshire Ripper serial killer. The Guardian called it "a lyrical account of what cities and their residents witness, how places shape character."
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“There’s a connection with The Narrow Road to the Deep North because that book was also concerned with his father’s experience of being a slave laborer in the Second World War: he was an Australian captured by the Japanese…what holds this part memoir, part science, part history together is the personal thread. The book begins and ends with a kayaking accident the author, Richard Flanagan, has in a river in Tasmania. He is rescued, but only just. He describes this moment when he is floating above the river, looking down at himself. Is that death?” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist
Isabel Hilton ,
Journalist
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