The Best Memoirs: The 2025 NBCC Autobiography Shortlist

Thanks for talking us through the 2025 shortlist for the National Book Critics Circle Prize for Autobiography—has it been a good year for memoir and autobiography?

It’s been one of the best years for memoir and autobiography in recent memory! It’s been a delight to read so many interesting, well-written, imaginatively constructed, and thought-provoking memoirs.

What were the judges looking for, when they came to compile the shortlist?

We weren’t looking for any one particular thing. We talked a lot over the past year about books that told an emotionally moving story, that were aesthetically beautiful, that used innovative forms for telling their stories, and these were the five books that eventually rose to the top.

Let’s look at the books. Could you introduce us to Manjula Martin’s very timely The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History. What can readers expect? And what did the judges like about it?

The Last Fire Season tells a critically important story about climate change, land cultivation, and the fires that broke out in northern California in 2020. Manjula Martin writes about science and history in an accessible and engaging manner, and because she lived through these fires, she makes the story of their impact extremely vivid.

Right, it’s a work of natural history but also a kind of medical memoir.

Yes, she also weaves in her personal story of disability, showing the interconnectedness of our bodies and ecosystems.

What about Wei Tchou’s Little Seed? It’s billed as ‘an experimental memoir’—what form does it take?

In Little Seed, Wei Tchou is telling a novelistic personal story of trans-generational trauma—her parents were survivors of China’s Cultural Revolution, and her father had especially bad PTSD—while interspersing chapters about her hobby of raising ferns.

At first the juxtaposition might seem jarring, but ultimately she shows how families are like ferns in their need for nurture, the interdependence, and finally independent growth of seedlings. It’s a deeply moving story told in a refreshingly offbeat manner.

I love the NBCC shortlists, because they surface wonderful books I might otherwise have missed. Do you see that as part of your role—to raise attention to less-publicised books?

Our goal was to find the best of the best in autobiography. In order to do that, we read very widely so as not to overlook books that don’t necessarily get a lot of publicity and whose publishers don’t have the money or means to launch huge campaigns for their authors. Small independent presses and university presses by design tend to publish innovative works, so the award’s committee members really wanted to make sure that we read as many of their offerings as we could. That so many indie and university presses ended up on our short list is an indication of the quality of the writing!

I’m also extremely intrigued by Zito Madu’s ‘surrealist travel memoir’ The Minotaur at Calle Lanza. What does a surrealist travel memoir look like? And what did you admire in it?

Zito Madu’s The Minotaur at Calle Lanza is truly unlike any other autobiography I’d read before. It’s the story of the author’s residency in Venice during the pandemic, which already seemed like a surreal experience, but then the author introduces the mythic Minotaur in an unexpected and surprising plot twist.

Madu weaves in family stories, of growing up as the son of Nigerian immigrants in Detroit, with his experience as a Black man moving and living in spaces where there are very few Black people. The book really transports the reader to Venice, and then uses a surreal twist to bring to the foreground Madu’s experiences with being Othered. I don’t want to give away too much. People should just read it! It’s a smart, deeply engrossing book.

Next on the 2025 autobiography shortlist we have a family memoir, Erika Morillo’s Mother Archive. It combines personal writing with archival photographs, news clippings, and film stills, among other things. Would you tell us more?

Most of the gorgeous and haunting black-and-white photographs were taken by the author! Erika Morillo is an accomplished photographer, and the memoir in many ways is the story of a young woman coming into her own as an artist. It’s also the story of surviving political and gendered violence. Her father was murdered in a politically motivated act in 1988 in the Dominican Republic, which sets off a chain of traumatic events in the family that reverberate over generations. This is a riveting and aesthetically beautiful memoir.

Finally, we’ve come to Alexei Navalny’s posthumous Patriot. The English version was translated by Arch Tait and Stephen Dalziel. Why have you decided to shortlist the book?

Alexei Navalny’s Patriot is the whole package: it tells a compelling story of a man whose life was important and impactful and it’s a very literary book. The writing is beautiful! It’s not just a journalistic account of Navalny’s struggles under Putin’s authoritarianism, but it also showcases Navalny’s talent as a writer. Bravo to the translators because the writing flows very well in English.

Our editor-in-chief Sophie Roell recently described it as “unmissable” and surprisingly funny—”in a dark, Russian humour kind of way.” Does that sound right to you?

Yes, I agree. Navalny often writes with surprising humor despite his extreme hardships. He has a sharp eye for irony and characterization, and even when he is imprisoned, he can write about his captors and his experiences with great wit.

Finally—did the judging process leave you optimistic about the state of autobiography and memoir in 2025?

If publishers continue to embrace the aesthetic and creative diversity of the storytelling that we read last year, then 2025 is going to be a great year!