Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife by Francesca Wade (Scribner) has won the 2026 Plutarch Award, sponsored by Biographers International Organization and the only international literary award for biography judged exclusively by biographers. Wade receives a $3,000 honorarium.
The award committee wrote that the winning title "represents a compelling original approach to Stein's life and work and, ultimately, our thinking about biography itself. Francesca Wade identifies key figures in the reconstruction of Stein's afterlife ranging from Stein's partner, Alice B. Toklas, to scholars like Leon Katz and Janet Malcolm, culminating in Wade herself. 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."