Autobiography of great person awards

Thanks for joining us. We love featuring the National Book Critics Circle shortlists; they always surface excellent books we might otherwise have missed. What were you looking for when you were drawing up the NBCC shortlist of the best recent memoirs?

All the books that made the shortlist were works that the committee members felt fundamentally changed how we viewed the world, whether an aspect of history or how to view the present.

51 Best Autobiographies Every Writer Should Read

We didn’t set out the year looking for these kinds of books per se, but this was an aspect that we noticed in our discussions and these five titles kept coming up. They are aesthetically all quite different but they are all unforgettable.

Did you notice any trends among this year’s submissions?

This was a phenomenal year for autobiography.

We were thrilled by all the diversity of subject matter, authors, aesthetics, forms. We saw a lot of books that crossed genres in some way, that were not just How to Write a Biography: A Step-by-Step Guide - ProWritingAid ZIZA