The Biographers' Club Prize 2007

We are featuring this prize again as last year our listing helped the organisers to achieve a record number of entries.

The Biographers Club Prize was established in 1999 to finance and encourage first-time writers researching a biography.  It is unusual in that it is open to previously unpublished or uncommissioned writers and aims to fund the researching and writing of a proposed biography.

The judges for the 2007 Prize are Anne Sebba (whose books include biographies of Mother Teresa, Enid Bagnold and the forthcoming Jennie Churchill: Winston’s American Mother), Rachel Holmes (author of Dr James Barry: Scanty Particulars and The Hottentot Venus) and Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson (agent, former publisher and author of Blood Royal and When in France).

The prize, which is sponsored by the Daily Mail, is worth £2,000 and has usually led to a publishing deal.

Applicants should submit (preferably by email) a proposal of no more than 20 pages, including a synopsis and 10-page sample chapter (double-spaced, numbered pages), CV and a note on the market for the book, sources consulted and competing literature, to the prize administrator: Anna Swan, anna@annaswan.co.uk  or by post to 119A Fordwych Road, London NW2 3NJ.

The deadline for entries is 1 August 2007.

Entry fee: £10 (cheques made payable to the Biographers’ Club).

 Further details at www.biographersclub.co.uk


The winner will be announced at a lunch in September.

In 2006 the Prize had its first all-female short list.

The winner was Helen Smith (for Edward Garnett: Midwife of Genius  and she has recently signed contracts for its publication by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Farrar, Straus in the US.

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