The National Book Critics Circle has revealed the longlists for its 2025 autobiography and biography awards.
Margaret Atwood was longlisted in the autobiography category for her long-awaited memoir Book of Lives, alongside Arundhati Roy for Mother Mary Comes to Me, which was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and Yiyun Li for Things in Nature Merely Grow, a National Book Award and Andrew Carnegie Medal finalist.
Also nominated were Michael Thomas for The Broken King, Hala Alyan for I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, Geraldine Brooks for Memorial Days, Beth Macy for Paper Girl, Hanif Kureishi for Shattered, Miriam Toews for A Truce That Is Not Peace, and Hester Kaplan for Twice Born: Finding My Father in the Margins of Biography.
Sue Prideaux made the biography longlist for Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin, as did Sam Tanenhaus for Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America; Claire Hoffman for Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson; and Mayukh Sen for Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star.
Other authors earning nominations in the biography category were Amanda Vaill for Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution; Carla Kaplan for Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford; Ashley D. Farmer for Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore; Alex Green for A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle To Care for America’s Disabled; Philip Hoare for William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love; and Gregory Jusdanis and Peter Jeffreys for Constantine Cavafy: A New Biography.
The National Book Critics Circle Awards were first given out in 1976. The shortlists for the awards will be announced next month, with the winners revealed at a ceremony in New York on March 26, 2026.
Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.
