Michelle Obama wins Grammy for Becoming audiobook

Michelle Obama has won the award for best spoken word album at the 2020 Grammys for the audiobook of her memoir Becoming (Viking).

The award, open to poetry, audiobooks and storytelling, went to Obama over filmmaker John Waters, musician Eric Alexandrakis, spoken word artist Sekou Andrews, and two of the Beastie Boys, Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz, who were also nominated in the category.

In the UK Becoming was the bestselling audio download of 2019 through Audible and has racked up seven months in the monthly Audible number one spot since publication in November 2018. In hardback, it has meanwhile sold 730,532 copies through Nielsen's Total Consumer Market to date. Obama took home Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year and Audiobook of the Year at the 2019 British Book Awards.

Another former first lady to have taken home the Grammy was Hillary Clinton in 1997 for the audiobook version of It Takes a Village. Barack Obama meanwhile won the award in 2008 for The Audacity of Hope.