Newsflash:

We’re open every day except Good Friday, 29 March. View our Easter opening hours here ›

2024
Applications closed

Entries to the 2024 National Biography Award have now closed.

The shortlist will be announced in July 2024 and the winners will be announced in August 2024. 

PDF icon Guidelines

About the Award

Since 1996, the National Biography Award has celebrated excellence in biography, autobiography and memoir writing. With a prize pool of $42,000, it is the nation’s richest prize for Australian biographical writing and memoir: 

•    $25,000 for the winner 
•    $2,000 for each of the six shortlisted authors 
•    $5,000 Michael Crouch Award for a first published biography, autobiography or memoir by an Australian writer 


The Award is supported by the State Library of NSW Foundation. This year we acknowledge the support of the John Lamble Foundation, Graham & Charlene Bradley Foundation and Sarah Crouch. 

Judging Panel

photo of melinda harvey

Dr Melinda Harvey

Panel Chair

Melinda Harvey is a book critic who has written for a wide variety of Australian newspapers and magazines since 2004. She has been a Walkley Awards finalist for her criticism and has served as on numerous judging panels, including the Miles Franklin Literary Award (2017-2021) and Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize (2021-2022). She is Lecturer in English at Monash University.

photo of jason om

Jason Om

Jason Om is an award-winning reporter with the ABC’s 7.30 program, author of the memoir, All Mixed Up, and a presenter. In 2021, Jason won the Media Diversity Australia Award at the Mid-Year Walkleys, and in 2022, the media accolade at the NSW (LGBTQ) Honour Awards. In 2017, he won widespread praise for his personal story about his dad’s sixteen-year struggle to accept him as gay. Previously, Jason has been a presenter on the ABC News Channel and a reporter for ABC News Breakfast, ABC Life, Lateline and ABC Radio. All Mixed Up is his first book.

Photo of Eda Gunaydin

Eda Gunaydin

Eda Gunaydin is a Turkish-Australian memoirist and critic whose writing explores class, capital, intergenerational trauma and diaspora. You can find her work in the Sydney Review of Books, HEAT Magazine, Meanjin and elsewhere. Her debut essay collection Root & Branch: Essays on Inheritance won the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Matt Richell Prize for New Writer of the Year at the 2023 ABIAs.

Past winners

2023
Book cover
La Trobe University Press/ Black Inc.
Winner
2022
Leaping into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears book cover
Allen & Unwin
Winner
2021
Truganini
Allen and Unwin
Winner
2020
Cover image of Tiberius with a telephone
Winner
2019
No Friend But the mountain
Winner
2018
Cover image of the enigmatic mr deakin
Winner
2017
Cover image of Before Rupert
UQP
Winner
2016
Book cover of Mannix by Brenda Niall
Winner
2015
Winner
2014
Winner
2013
Australian character actor Frank Thrings and Australian entrepreneur Frank Thrings on book cover of The Two Frank Thrings by Peter Fitzpatrick
Winner
2012
Winner

Contact Us

For more information please contact Awards, State Library of NSW.

Email: awards@sl.nsw.gov.au
Telephone: (02) 9273 1767, or alternatively (02) 9273 1770

Related events

Meet the winners of the National Biography Award 2023

Hear from the winners of the National Biography Award 2023, Ann-Marie Priest and Tom Patterson.

2020 National Biography Awards Winner Announcement

Announcement of the 2020 National Biography Awards winners