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The 2018 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Biography

Finalist: Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character, by Kay Redfield Jamison (Alfred A. Knopf)

A superb examination of the life, work and struggles of Robert Lowell, which painstakingly explores the bipolar disorder that plagued the poet and elicits greater understanding of the relationship between mania and creativity.

Nominated Work

Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character

By

Kay Redfield Jamison

In this magisterial study of the relationship between illness and art, the best-selling author of "An Unquiet Mind" brings a fresh perspective to the life and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Lowell. In his poetry, Lowell put his manic-depressive illness (now known as bipolar disorder) into the public domain, and in the process created a new and arresting language for madness. Here Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison brings her expertise in mood disorders to bear on Lowell's story, illuminating not only the relationships between mania, depression, and creativity but also how Lowell's illness and treatment influenced his work (and often became its subject). A bold, sympathetic account of a poet who was—both despite and because of mental illness—a passionate, original observer of the human condition.

-- from the publisher

Biography

Kay Redfield Jamison is the Dalio Family Professor in Mood Disorders and a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, as well as an honorary professor of English at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is the author of the national best sellers "An Unquiet Mind," "Night Falls Fast," and "Touched with Fire," and is coauthor of the standard medical text on manic-depressive illness, "Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression." Dr. Jamison is a recipient of the Lewis Thomas Prize, the Rhoda and Barnard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health from the National Academy of Medicine, and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.

Winners

Prize Winner in Biography in 2018:

Caroline Fraser

A deeply researched and elegantly written portrait of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie series, that describes how Wilder transformed her family’s story of poverty, failure and struggle into an uplifting tale of self-reliance, familial love and perseverance. Biography

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Biography in 2018:

John A. Farrell

A tale that presents Nixon from boyhood to senator, power broker and president, in all of his complexity and contradiction.

The Jury

Annette Gordon-Reed(Chair)*

Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History and Professor of History, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Gilbert King*

author

Amy Wilentz

Professor of English

Winners in Biography

2017

Hisham Matar

For a first-person elegy for home and father that examines with controlled emotion the past and present of an embattled region.
2016

William Finnegan

A finely crafted memoir of a youthful obsession that has propelled the author through a distinguished writing career.
2015

David I. Kertzer

An engrossing dual biography that uses recently opened Vatican archives to shed light on two men who exercised nearly absolute power over their realms.
2014

Megan Marshall

A richly researched book that tells the remarkable story of a 19th century author, journalist, critic and pioneering advocate of women's rights who died in a shipwreck.
See All Biography

2018 Prize Winners

Investigative Reporting

Staff of The Washington Post

For purposeful and relentless reporting that changed the course of a Senate race in Alabama by revealing a candidate’s alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls and subsequent efforts to undermine the journalism that exposed it.
See All 2018 Winners