PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
# PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

The PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award is awarded by the PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) to honor a "distinguished biography possessing notable literary merit which has been published in the United States during the previous calendar year." The award carries a $5,000 prize.

The award was established by Rodman L. Drake. Previous judges include Brad Gooch, Benjamin Taylor, and Amanda Vaill.

The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by International PEN affiliates in over 145 PEN centers around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been characterized as being among the "major" American literary prizes.

## Award winners

PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography winners :

| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| - | - | - | - |
| 2008 | Janet Malcolm | Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice | Winner |
| 2009 | Richard Brody | Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard | Winner |
| 2009 | Jeffrey Meyers | Samuel Johnson: The Struggle | Runner-up |
| 2009 | Stanley Plumly | Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography | Runner-up |
| 2010 | Michael Scammell | Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic | Winner |
| 2011 | Stacy Schiff | Cleopatra: A Life | Winner |
| 2012 | Robert K. Massie | Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman | Winner |
| 2012 | Janny Scott | A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother | Runner-up |
| 2013 | Tom Reiss | The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo | Winner |
| 2013 | Gordon Bowker | James Joyce: | Runner-up |
| 2014 | Linda Leavell | Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore | Winner |
| 2015 | Anna Whitelock | The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court | Winner |
| 2016 | Nancy Princenthal | Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art | Winner |
| 2017 | Joe Jackson | Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary | Winner |
| 2018 | John A. Farrell | Richard Nixon: The Life | Winner |
| 2019 | Imani Perry | Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry | Winner |
| 2020 | Jacquelyn Dowd Hall | Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America | Winner |
| 2021 | Amy Stanley | Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World | Winner |
| 2022 | Rebecca Donner | All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days. The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler: | Winner |
| 2023 | Dan Charnas | Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm | Winner |
