Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The premier prize for American fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for fiction, first given in 1918, is widely recognized as one of the biggest prizes in the American publishing industry. Before 1948, the prize was only given to novels. It was later expanded to include short fiction collections, with the first anthology win being the collected stories of Katherine Porter in 1966.
A common feature one might notice on this list (and many awards lists) is that many authors won the Pulitzer for books that are not often their most studied or widely acclaimed. William Faulkner, for example, has only won Pulitzers for some of his more minor works. It's not uncommon for authors to win prizes that are felt to be "overdue," if the author was overlooked when they published books that went on to be classics. In Faulkner's case, the administrator for the prize convinced the committee to overturn their choice in 1955 for that exact reason. Likewise Ernest Hemingway didn't win a prize until the 1950s.
| 1918 | His Family, Ernest Poole |
|---|---|
| 1919 | The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington |
| 1921 | The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton |
| 1922 | Alice Adams, Booth Tarkington |
| 1923 | One of Ours, Willa Cather |
| 1924 | The Able McLaughlins, Margaret Wilson |
| 1925 | So Big, Edna Ferber |
| 1926 | Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis |
| 1927 | Early Autumn, Louis Bromfield |
| 1928 | The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder |
| 1929 | Scarlet Sister Mary, Julia Peterkin |
| 1930 | Laughing Boy, Oliver La Farge |
| 1931 | Years of Grace, Margaret Ayer Barnes |
| 1932 | The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck |
| 1933 | The Store, T. S. Stribling |
| 1934 | Lamb in His Bosom, Caroline Miller |
| 1935 | Now in November, Josephine Winslow Johnson |
| 1936 | Honey in the Horn, Harold L. Davis |
| 1937 | Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell |
| 1938 | The Late George Apley, John Phillips Marquand |
| 1939 | The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings |
| 1940 | The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck |
| 1942 | In This Our Life, Ellen Glasgow |
| 1943 | Dragon's Teeth, Upton Sinclair |
| 1944 | Journey in the Dark, Martin Flavin |
| 1945 | A Bell for Adano, John Hersey |
| 1947 | All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren |
| 1948 | Tales of the South Pacific, James A. Michener |
| 1949 | Guard of Honor, James Gould Cozzens |
| 1950 | The Way West, A. B. Guthrie, Jr. |
| 1951 | The Town, Conrad Richter |
| 1952 | The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk |
| 1953 | The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway |
| 1955 | A Fable, William Faulkner |
| 1956 | Andersonville, MacKinlay Kantor |
| 1958 | A Death in the Family, James Agee |
| 1959 | The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, Robert Lewis Taylor |
| 1960 | Advise and Consent, Allen Drury |
| 1961 | To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee |
| 1962 | The Edge of Sadness, Edwin O'Connor |
| 1963 | The Reivers, William Faulkner |
| 1965 | The Keepers of the House, Shirley Ann Grau |
| 1966 | Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, Katherine Anne Porter |
| 1967 | The Fixer, Bernard Malamud |
| 1968 | The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron |
| 1969 | House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday |
| 1970 | Collected Stories, Jean Stafford |
| 1972 | Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner |
| 1973 | The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty |
| 1975 | The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara |
| 1976 | Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow |
| 1978 | Elbow Room, James Alan McPherson |
| 1979 | The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever |
| 1980 | The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer |
| 1981 | A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole |
| 1982 | Rabbit Is Rich, John Updike |
| 1983 | The Color Purple, Alice Walker |
| 1984 | Ironweed, William Kennedy |
| 1985 | Foreign Affairs, Alison Lurie |
| 1986 | Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry |
| 1987 | A Summons to Memphis, Peter Taylor |
| 1988 | Beloved, Toni Morrison |
| 1989 | Breathing Lessons, Anne Tyler |
| 1990 | The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos |
| 1991 | Rabbit at Rest, John Updike |
| 1992 | A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley |
| 1993 | A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain, Robert Olen Butler |
| 1994 | The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx |
| 1995 | The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields |
| 1996 | Independence Day, Richard Ford |
| 1997 | Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, Steven Millhauser |
| 1998 | American Pastoral, Philip Roth |
| 1999 | The Hours, Michael Cunningham |
| 2000 | Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri |
| 2001 | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon |
| 2002 | Empire Falls, Richard Russo |
| 2003 | Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides |
| 2004 | The Known World, Edward P. Jones |
| 2005 | Gilead, Marilynne Robinson |
| 2006 | March, Geraldine Brooks |
| 2007 | The Road, Cormac McCarthy |
| 2008 | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz |
| 2009 | Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout |
| 2010 | Tinkers, Paul Harding |
| 2011 | A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan |
| 2013 | The Orphan Master's Son, Adam Johnson |
| 2014 | The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt |
| 2015 | All the Light we Cannot See, Anthony Doerr |
| 2016 | The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen |
| 2017 | The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead |
| 2018 | Less, Andrew Sean Greer |
| 2019 | The Overstory, Richard Powers |
| 2020 | The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead |
| 2021 | The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich |
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