Archive Collection
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Winners
1918–2026
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of America's most prestigious literary honours, awarded annually since 1918 to the best American novel of the year. Past winners include William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Colson Whitehead.
About the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
- Awarded by
- Columbia University
- First awarded
- 1917
- Country
- United States
- Winner receives
- $15,000
When it is announced
Winners and finalists in every category are announced together in early May. See the full announcement calendar.
How to enter
Anyone may enter a book, including the author, for a fee. Books published in the first half of the year are due by mid June and those published in the second half by mid October.
Official prize site · Checked August 2026. Dates move year to year, so confirm on the official site before entering.
| Year | Title & Author | Historical Context |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Angel Down | The Pulitzer board gave Angel Down the 2026 Prize for Fiction on May 4, 2026, with Katie Kitamura's Audition and Torrey Peters's Stag Dance: A… |
| 2025 | James | James won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The board's citation called it "an accomplished reconsideration of Huckleberry Finn that gives agency… |
| 2024 | Night Watch | Night Watch won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The citation described a beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia's Trans Allegheny… |
| 2023 | Trust | Trust shared the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead. It was the first time in the category's history, then a… |
| 2023 | Demon Copperhead | Demon Copperhead shared the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with Hernan Diaz's Trust, the first split in the category's history. It took the Women's… |
| 2022 | The Netanyahus | The Netanyahus won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The board called it a mordant and linguistically deft historical novel about the ambiguities… |
| 2021 | The Night Watchman | The Night Watchman won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The citation described a majestic and polyphonic novel about a community's efforts to… |
| 2020 | The Nickel Boys | The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Colson Whitehead the fourth writer to win the fiction prize twice, three years after… |
| 2019 | The Overstory | The Overstory won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The citation praised an ingeniously structured narrative that branches and canopies like the… |
| 2018 | Less | Less won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the citation praised "a generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and… |
| 2017 | The Underground Railroad | The Underground Railroad won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in a citation praising a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the… |
| 2016 | The Sympathizer | The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was Viet Thanh Nguyen's first novel, and it also took the Edgar Award for Best First… |
| 2015 | All the Light We Cannot See | All the Light We Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The board described an imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors… |
| 2014 | The Goldfinch | The Goldfinch won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in a citation calling it a beautifully written coming of age novel with exquisitely drawn… |
| 2013 | The Orphan Master's Son | The Orphan Master's Son won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The citation called it an exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an… |
| 2012 | No Award | The first "No Award" year in 35 years. It caused a massive outcry in the literary world and led to a reform of the Board's voting procedures. |
| 2011 | A Visit from the Goon Squad | A Visit from the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the citation called it "an… |
| 2010 | Tinkers | Tinkers won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it is the great outsider story of the prize's modern history. Paul Harding could not sell it.… |
| 2009 | Olive Kitteridge | Olive Kitteridge won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The citation described a collection of thirteen short stories set in small town Maine that… |
| 2008 | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was Junot Diaz's first… |
| 2007 | The Road | The Road won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, describing a father and son, each the other's world entire, sustained by love as they journey… |
| 2006 | March | March won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was Geraldine Brooks's second novel and the result was widely reported as an upset, with several… |
| 2005 | Gilead | Gilead won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The book jacket quoted on the Pulitzer Prize site called… |
| 2004 | The Known World | The Known World won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Anisfield Wolf Book Award, and Edward P.… |
| 2003 | Middlesex | Middlesex won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was Jeffrey Eugenides's second novel, published nine years after The Virgin Suicides, and he… |
| 2002 | Empire Falls | Empire Falls won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, beating two finalists that were far more discussed at the time, Jonathan Franzen's The… |
| 2001 | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, ahead of finalists Joyce Carol Oates for Blonde and Joy Williams… |
| 2000 | Interpreter of Maladies | Interpreter of Maladies won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was Jhumpa Lahiri's first book, she was thirty two, and awarding the fiction… |
| 1999 | The Hours | The Hours won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN Faulkner Award. The novel draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to… |
| 1998 | American Pastoral | American Pastoral won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the only Pulitzer of Philip Roth's career, arriving nearly forty years after Goodbye,… |
| 1997 | Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer | Martin Dressler won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a result widely reported as a surprise, since Steven Millhauser was known mainly to other… |
| 1996 | Independence Day | Independence Day won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN Faulkner Award, and it was the first novel to take both in the same year. It is… |
| 1995 | The Stone Diaries | The Stone Diaries won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and, in 1993, Canada's Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. No other book has won… |
| 1994 | The Shipping News | The Shipping News won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 1993 National Book Award and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. It was Annie… |
| 1993 | A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain | A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, one of the few story collections ever to take it. Robert Olen Butler… |
| 1992 | A Thousand Acres | A Thousand Acres won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award. Jane Smiley taught at Iowa State… |
| 1991 | Rabbit at Rest | Rabbit at Rest won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1990 National Book Critics Circle Award. It was John Updike's second fiction Pulitzer… |
| 1990 | The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love | The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Oscar Hijuelos became the first Hispanic writer to receive it. He… |
| 1989 | Breathing Lessons | Breathing Lessons won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was Anne Tyler's eleventh novel, and she had been a Pulitzer finalist twice already,… |
| 1988 | Beloved | Beloved won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction after one of the sharpest public arguments in the history of American book prizes. It had lost the… |
| 1987 | A Summons to Memphis | A Summons to Memphis won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was a finalist for the 1986 National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Ritz Paris… |
| 1986 | Lonesome Dove | Lonesome Dove won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded on 17 April that year. Larry McMurtry said repeatedly that he wrote it to… |
| 1985 | Foreign Affairs | Foreign Affairs won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Alison Lurie taught at Cornell for more than thirty years, and Corinth University, which… |
| 1984 | Ironweed | Ironweed won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award, and William Kennedy received a MacArthur Fellowship… |
| 1983 | The Color Purple | The Color Purple won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award, and Alice Walker became the first Black woman to receive the… |
| 1982 | Rabbit Is Rich | Rabbit Is Rich took the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award and the 1981 National Book Critics Circle Award, a sweep of all… |
| 1981 | A Confederacy of Dunces | Published eleven years after its author died, A Confederacy of Dunces won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. John Kennedy Toole finished it in… |
| 1980 | The Executioner's Song | The Executioner's Song won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which looks odd, since every word of it is sourced from interviews, transcripts and… |
| 1979 | The Stories of John Cheever | The Stories of John Cheever appeared in 1978, sold in numbers almost unheard of for a story collection, and won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction… |
| 1978 | Elbow Room | Elbow Room won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making James Alan McPherson the first Black writer to take that prize in fiction. Gwendolyn… |
| 1977 | No Award | Maclean was 73 when the board snubbed his debut. The book eventually became a beloved classic and a major motion picture. |
| 1976 | Humboldt's Gift | Humboldt's Gift won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the Nobel Prize in Literature followed for Saul Bellow later the same year, which is why… |
| 1975 | The Killer Angels | The Killer Angels won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and then sat almost unread for nearly twenty years. Michael Shaara had published science… |
| 1974 | No Award | Perhaps the most famous snub in Pulitzer history, it led many to question whether the Board was too out of touch with contemporary literature. |
| 1973 | The Optimist's Daughter | The Optimist's Daughter won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Eudora Welty's only Pulitzer, and it came late, after years in which she published… |
| 1972 | Angle of Repose | Angle of Repose won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was placed eighty second on the Modern Library's list of the century's English language… |
| 1971 | No Award | The 1970s saw frequent "No Award" years as the Board struggled to keep pace with the increasingly experimental and bold nature of modern fiction. |
| 1970 | The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford | The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, gathering work from Children Are Bored on Sunday and Bad Characters… |
| 1969 | House Made of Dawn | House Made of Dawn won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and made N. Scott Momaday, who was Kiowa, the first Native American writer to win the… |
| 1968 | The Confessions of Nat Turner | The Confessions of Nat Turner won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was a bestseller, and within months it had become the most publicly… |
| 1967 | The Fixer | The Fixer won both the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1967 National Book Award, Bernard Malamud's second National Book Award after The Magic… |
| 1966 | The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter | The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter won both the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1966 National Book Award. It works as a career… |
| 1965 | The Keepers of the House | The Keepers of the House won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was published in 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act, and it cost its author… |
| 1964 | No Award | This was a peak era of friction between the specialized literary juries and the more conservative Pulitzer Board. |
| 1963 | The Reivers | The Reivers was published on 4 June 1962 and William Faulkner died a month later, on 6 July, so the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded… |
| 1962 | The Edge of Sadness | The Edge of Sadness won the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and then went out of print for decades. Edwin O'Connor was the leading novelist of… |
| 1961 | To Kill a Mockingbird | To Kill a Mockingbird won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Harper Lee's first novel and, for the next fifty five years, her only one. It sold… |
| 1960 | Advise and Consent | Advise and Consent won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction over the fiction jury's own choice. The jury had recommended Saul Bellow's Henderson the… |
| 1959 | The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters | The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Doubleday published it in 1958, and by its publisher's account it has sold… |
| 1958 | A Death in the Family | A Death in the Family won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded posthumously. James Agee died of a heart attack in a New York taxi in May… |
| 1957 | No Award | O'Connor's book was a popular look at Irish American machine politics in Boston, but the Board reportedly found it lacked sufficient literary weight. |
| 1956 | Andersonville | Andersonville was published in October 1955, became a bestseller, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1956. MacKinlay Kantor had been working… |
| 1955 | A Fable | A Fable won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award in 1955, the fullest official endorsement American letters could give,… |
| 1954 | No Award | A controversial decision, as critics already hailed Bellow's novel as a transformative work of American literature. The Board offered no official… |
| 1953 | The Old Man and the Sea | The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953, Hemingway's first despite two decades of eligibility. Its publication was itself… |
| 1952 | The Caine Mutiny | The Caine Mutiny won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1952. It reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list in August 1951 and stayed there… |
| 1951 | The Town | The Town won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1951, completing The Awakening Land trilogy Conrad Richter had begun with The Trees in 1940 and The… |
| 1950 | The Way West | The Way West won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1950. It is the second book of A. B. Guthrie's Montana sequence, following The Big Sky, whose… |
| 1949 | Guard of Honor | Guard of Honor won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1949, chosen from a field that included Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, and the two… |
| 1948 | Tales of the South Pacific | Tales of the South Pacific won the Pulitzer in 1948, the first year the prize was named for Fiction rather than the Novel; the category was redefined… |
| 1947 | All the King's Men | All the King's Men won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1947. Everyone saw Huey Long in it, since Robert Penn Warren had taught at Louisiana State… |
| 1946 | No Award | The Board offered no official explanation for withholding the prize this year, though it came during the transition period immediately following… |
| 1945 | A Bell for Adano | A Bell for Adano won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1945, while the war was still on. John Hersey was a correspondent who had covered the Sicily… |
| 1944 | Journey in the Dark | Journey in the Dark was published in 1943, won the Harper Prize that year and the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1944. Flavin was primarily a… |
| 1943 | Dragon's Teeth | Dragon's Teeth won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1943, in the middle of the war it had seen coming. Time credited it with making history clear… |
| 1942 | In This Our Life | In This Our Life won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1942, and the board member who pushed for it said openly that the award recognised Ellen… |
| 1941 | No Award | One of the most controversial "No Award" decisions. The Board reportedly found Hemingway's Spanish Civil War novel too violent and profane, though it… |
| 1940 | The Grapes of Wrath | The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1940 and the National Book Award, and its publication in 1939 was a national event:… |
| 1939 | The Yearling | The Yearling won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1939. Published in March 1938, it was the bestselling novel in the United States that year, at… |
| 1938 | The Late George Apley | The Late George Apley won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1938 and was a bestseller. Reassessments in The Atlantic have treated it as the lasting… |
| 1937 | Gone with the Wind | Gone with the Wind won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. Published on 30 June 1936 at the unheard of price of three dollars, it sold roughly a… |
| 1936 | Honey in the Horn | Honey in the Horn won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1936, after taking the Harper Prize for the best first novel of 1935. H. L. Davis remains… |
| 1935 | Now in November | Now in November won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1935. Josephine Johnson was twenty four, and she remains the youngest winner of the fiction… |
| 1934 | Lamb in His Bosom | Lamb in His Bosom won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1934 and France's Prix Femina Americain the following year, and it was an immediate… |
| 1933 | The Store | The Store won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1933, cited for its sustained interest and its convincing and comprehensive picture of Southern… |
| 1932 | The Good Earth | The Good Earth won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932 after being the bestselling American novel of both 1931 and 1932, and it carried Pearl… |
| 1931 | Years of Grace | Years of Grace won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1931, and its author's road there is better than most plots. Margaret Ayer Barnes was a… |
| 1930 | Laughing Boy | Laughing Boy won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1930, a first novel by a twenty eight year old Harvard trained anthropologist who had done… |
| 1929 | Scarlet Sister Mary | Scarlet Sister Mary won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1929, over the protest of the jury chair Richard Burton, who had recommended John… |
| 1928 | The Bridge of San Luis Rey | The Bridge of San Luis Rey won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1928 and was the bestselling fiction of 1927, an almost unrepeatable feat for a… |
| 1927 | Early Autumn | Early Autumn won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1927. Louis Bromfield wrote it in France, where he had settled in 1925 and produced the run of… |
| 1926 | Arrowsmith | Arrowsmith was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1926, and Sinclair Lewis refused it, the only fiction winner ever to do so. His stated… |
| 1925 | So Big | So Big won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1925, and it was the bestselling American novel of 1924, selling by the hundreds of thousands within a… |
| 1924 | The Able McLaughlins | The Able McLaughlins won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1924, and had already taken the Harper Prize for a first novel. Margaret Wilson knew the… |
| 1923 | One of Ours | One of Ours won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1923 and widened Willa Cather's readership considerably; it arrived between My Ántonia and A Lost… |
| 1922 | Alice Adams | Alice Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1922, making Booth Tarkington the first writer to win the fiction prize twice, three years after… |
| 1921 | The Age of Innocence | The Age of Innocence won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1921, making Edith Wharton the first woman to win it, and the circumstances carry an… |
| 1920 | No Award | The jury actually recommended "Java Head" by Joseph Hergesheimer, but the Pulitzer Board overturned the decision, a common occurrence in the early… |
| 1919 | The Magnificent Ambersons | The Magnificent Ambersons won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1919, the prize's second year. It is the middle book of Tarkington's Growth… |
| 1918 | His Family | His Family won the first Pulitzer Prize for the Novel ever awarded, in 1918, which is the main reason anyone opens it now. The consensus, then and… |