Kate Medina is the winner of Biographers International Organization’s 2025 Editorial Excellence Award. Established in 2014, the annual award — whose past recipients include Michael Korda, Gayatri Patnaik, and Nan A. Talese — honors an editor for outstanding work in the service of biography and literature.

Medina will be presented with the accolade in New York City on Tuesday, October 7th, at an event that will feature remarks by lauded authors Jonathan Darman, Andrea Elliott, Jon Meacham, and Evan Thomas.

“The BIO Awards Committee is honored to present this year’s Editorial Excellence Award to Kate Medina, who recently retired from her position as executive vice president, associate publisher, and executive editorial director at Random House,” says Heather Clark, chair of the award committee. “There, she edited Isabel Wilkerson, Gloria Steinem, Sandra Day O’Connor, Katherine Boo, Tom Brokaw, E.L. Doctorow, Emma Cline, Anna Quindlen, and Tracy Kidder, among many others.”

Adds Meacham, “Henry James might well have had Kate in mind when he wrote that we should all strive to be someone on whom nothing is lost.”

The Editorial Excellence Award program is free to attend, but registration is required. Learn more here.