The longlist for this year’s National Biography Award has been announced.

The longlisted titles are:

• Seduced by Logic (Robyn Arianrhod, UQP)
• Good Living Street: The Fortunes of My Viennese Family (Tim Bonyhady, A&U)
• Michael Kirby: Paradoxes & Principles (Alexander Brown, Federation Press)
• From Moree to Mabo: The Mary Gaudron Story (Pamela Burton, UWA Publishing)
• Melbourne (Sophie Cunningham, NewSouth)
• Sydney (Delia Falconer, NewSouth)
• Lazarus Rising (John Howard, HarperCollins)
• How to Make Gravy (Paul Kelly, Hamish Hamilton)
• An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark (Mark McKenna, MUP)
• The Many Worlds of RH Matthews: In Search of an Australian Anthropologist (Martin Thomas, A&U)
• Not Dark Yet (David Walker, Giramondo)
• Claude Levi-Strauss (Patrick Wilcken, Bloomsbury).

The shortlist for the $25,000 award will be announced on 1 May, and the winner will be announced on 14 May at the State Library of New South Wales as part of the Sydney Writers Festival. As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, the library announced in 2011 that the prize money for the award would increase from $20,000 to $25,000 this year.

The National Biography Award is administered and presented by the State Library of NSW and is Australia’s richest prize for biographical writing and memoir. The 2011 prize was presented to Grand Obsessions: The Life and Work of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin by Alasdair McGregor (Lantern). More information about the award can be found online here.