Francesca Wade has won the Plutarch Award for Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife.

Today, the Biographers International Organization announced the winner of the 2026 Plutarch Award for Best Biography of 2025: Francesca Wade’s Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife.

“Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife represents a compelling original approach to Stein’s life and work and, ultimately, our thinking about biography itself,” said the 2026 Plutarch Award committee, in a statement. “A ground-breaking addition to the literary study of this iconic and controversial figure, Wade’s biography further offers urgent and exciting new insights into life-writing and how we read and interpret another’s life.”

Read an excerpt from the book here.

The Plutarch Award, the “only international literary award for biography judged exclusively by biographers,” comes with a $3,000 honorarium. Previous winners include Robert Caro, Hermione Lee, Ruth Franklin, and A.N. Wilson.