Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography

The Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. The award honors "a distinguished and factual memoir or autobiography by an American author." Winners receive US$15,000.^[1]

Recipients

Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography winners and finalists

Year	Author	Title	Publisher	Rationale
2023	Hua Hsu	Stay True	Doubleday	"An elegant and poignant coming of age account that considers intense, youthful friendships but also random violence that can suddenly and permanently alter the presumed logic of our personal narratives."[2][3]
	Chloé Cooper Jones	Easy Beauty: A Memoir	Avid Reader Press	"A spellbinding and brutally honest memoir drawing on art, travel, cultural observation and philosophical scholarship to convey the full experience of life as a disabled person whose view of humanity becomes increasingly compassionate."[2]
			Simon and Schuster
	Ingrid Rojas Contreras	Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir	Doubleday	"A lyrical personal account that reclaims a family legacy of indigenous practices, beliefs, and narratives to challenge Western notions of history and memory."[2]
2024	Cristina Rivera Garza	Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice	Hogarth	"A genre-bending account of the author's 20-year-old sister, murdered by a former boyfriend, that mixes memoir, feminist investigative journalism and poetic biography stitched together with a determination born of loss."[4][5]
	Andrew Leland	The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight	Penguin Press	"An emotionally resonant account by an author losing his eyesight from a rare genetic disorder, a memoir that explores the physical and conceptual experience of blindness, and that explains honestly how ableism fueled his reticence to accept his diagnosis."[5]
	Jonathan Rosen	The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions	Penguin Press	"An account of the author's brilliant childhood best friend and fellow student who was diagnosed as schizophrenic before fatally stabbing his girlfriend, a tragedy used to explore mental illness and the history of institutionalization."[5]
2025	Tessa Hulls	Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir	MCD	"An affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women—the author, her mother and grandmother—and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories."
	Alexandra Fuller	Fi: A Memoir of My Son	Grove	"An elegiac meditation on motherhood and grief, written from the rage and pain of losing a child, but in a voice that ultimately resonates with beauty and hard-won acceptance."
	Lucy Sante	I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition	Penguin Press	"A questioning yet clear-eyed narrative of the author’s journey to become who she is from who she once was, set against a vanished New York City that is profoundly part of her past."