The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the twenty-three American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during the preceding calendar year.

As the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel (awarded 1918–1947), it was one of the original Pulitzers; the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year (no Novel prize was awarded in 1917, the first one having been granted in 1918).

The name was changed to the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948 and eligibility was expanded to the broader "distinguished fiction published in book form". The Advisory Board wanted to give the award to James A. Michener's Tales of the South Pacific, which required expanding the category criteria and lifting the ban on short stories.

Finalists have been announced since 1980, usually a total of three. In 1927, the advisory board quietly instituted Pulitzer's word choice, replacing wholesome with whole.

A new consideration arose when the Pulitzer jury was unanimous in recommending Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey for the 1928 prize, although the book deals with Peruvians in Peru, not with Americans in America. The jury chair, Richard Burton of Columbia University, emphasized the moral value of the book in his report to the advisory board: "This piece of fiction is not only an admirable example of literary skill in the art of fiction, but also possesses a philosophic import and a spiritual elevation which greatly increases its literary value." Robert Morss Lovett disagreed, saying it would be "mere subterfuge to say that it has anything to do with the highest standard of American manners and manhood," but went along with the jury in finding "less literary merit" in the other novels under discussion. (Lovett rejected the runner-up Black April by Julia Peterkin, calling it "a rather unedifying picture of life in a primitive negro community" and "an ironical answer to the terms on which the prize is offered." Peterkin won nevertheless in 1929 for a similar novel, Scarlet Sister Mary.) Having settled on Bridge, the Advisory Board redefined the conditions from "whole atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood" to "preferably one which shall best present the whole atmosphere of American life," although this did not address the novel's setting. Further refinement into "the best novel published that year by an American author" removed any impediment to Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth in 1932, also with a foreign setting in its study of Chinese village life in Anhui, East China.

With 1929 came the first of several much more substantive changes. The board changed the wording to "preferably one which shall best present the whole atmosphere of American life" and deleted the insistence that the novel portray "the highest standard of American manners and manhood". In 1936, emphasis was changed again, with the award going to "a distinguished novel published during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life". In 1948, the advisory board widened the scope of the award with the wording "For distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life."

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1919

|Booth Tarkington

|The Magnificent Ambersons

|Novel

|-

! scope="row"|1920

|colspan=3 align=center |Not awarded

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1921

|Edith Wharton

|The Age of Innocence

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1922

|Booth Tarkington

|Alice Adams

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1923

|Willa Cather

|One of Ours

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1924

|Margaret Wilson

|The Able McLaughlins

|Debut novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1925

|Edna Ferber

|So Big

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1926

|Sinclair Lewis

|Arrowsmith

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1927

|Louis Bromfield

|Early Autumn

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1928

|Thornton Wilder

|The Bridge of San Luis Rey

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1929

|Julia Peterkin

|Scarlet Sister Mary

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1930

|Oliver La Farge

|Laughing Boy

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1931

|Margaret Ayer Barnes

|Years of Grace

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1932

|Pearl S. Buck

|The Good Earth

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1934

|Caroline Miller

|Lamb in His Bosom

|Debut novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1935

|Josephine Winslow Johnson

|Now in November

|Debut novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1936

|Harold L. Davis

|Honey in the Horn

|Debut novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1937

|Margaret Mitchell

|Gone with the Wind

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1938

|John Phillips Marquand

|The Late George Apley

|Epistolary novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1939

|Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

|The Yearling

|Young adult literature

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1940

|John Steinbeck <br>

|The Grapes of Wrath

|Novel

|-

! scope="row"|1941

|colspan=3 align=center |Not awarded

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1942

|Ellen Glasgow

|In This Our Life

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1943

|Upton Sinclair

|Dragon's Teeth

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1944

|Martin Flavin

|Journey in the Dark

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1945

|John Hersey

|A Bell for Adano

|War novel

|-

! scope="row"|1946

|colspan=3 align=center |Not awarded

|Political fiction

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1948

|James A. Michener

|Tales of the South Pacific

|Interrelated short stories, <br> Book debut

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1949

|James Gould Cozzens

|Guard of Honor

|War novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1950

|A. B. Guthrie

|The Way West

|Western fiction

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1951

|Conrad Richter

|The Town

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1952

|Herman Wouk

|The Caine Mutiny

|Historical fiction

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1953

|Ernest Hemingway

|The Old Man and the Sea

|Short novel

|-

! scope="row"|1954

|colspan=3 align=center |Not awarded

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1956

|MacKinlay Kantor

|Andersonville

|Historical fiction

|-

! scope="row"|1957

|colspan=3 align=center |Not awarded

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1958

|James Agee

|A Death in the Family <br> (posthumously)

|Autobiographical novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1959

|Robert Lewis Taylor

|The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters

|Historical fiction

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1960

|Allen Drury

|Advise and Consent

|Political fiction, <br> Debut novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1961

|Harper Lee

|To Kill a Mockingbird

|Southern Gothic, <br> Bildungsroman, <br> Debut novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1962

|Edwin O'Connor

|The Edge of Sadness

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1963

|William Faulkner

|The Reivers <br> (posthumously)

|Novel

|-

! scope="row"|1964

|colspan=3 align=center |Not awarded

|Short story collection

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1967

|Bernard Malamud

|The Fixer

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1968

|William Styron

|The Confessions of Nat Turner

|Historical fiction

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1969

|N. Scott Momaday

|House Made of Dawn

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1970

|Jean Stafford

|Collected Stories

|Short story collection

|-

! scope="row"|1971

|colspan=3 align=center |Not awarded

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1972

|Wallace Stegner

|Angle of Repose

|Novel

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1973

|Eudora Welty

|The Optimist's Daughter

|Short novel

|-

! scope="row"|1974

|colspan=3 align=center |Not awarded

|Novel

|-

! scope="row"|1977

|colspan=3 align=center |Not awarded

|Short story collection

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! scope="row"|1979

|John Cheever

|The Stories of John Cheever

|Short story collection

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1980

|Norman Mailer

|The Executioner's Song

|True crime novel

|-

|William Wharton

|Birdy

|

|-

|Philip Roth

|The Ghost Writer

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1981

|John Kennedy Toole

|A Confederacy of Dunces (posthumously)

|Picaresque novel

|-

|Frederick Buechner

|Godric

|

|-

|William Maxwell

|So Long, See You Tomorrow

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1982

|John Updike

|Rabbit Is Rich

|Novel

|-

|Robert Stone

|A Flag for Sunrise

|

|-

|Marilynne Robinson

|Housekeeping

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1983

|Alice Walker

|The Color Purple

|Epistolary novel

|-

|Anne Tyler

|Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

|

|-

|Chaim Grade

|Rabbis and Wives

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1984

|William Kennedy

|Ironweed

|Novel

|-

|Raymond Carver

|Cathedral

|

|-

|Thomas Berger

|The Feud

|

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1985

|Alison Lurie

|Foreign Affairs

|Novel

|-

|Diana O'Hehir

|I Wish This War Were Over

|

|-

|Douglas Unger

|Leaving the Land

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1986

|Larry McMurtry

|Lonesome Dove

|Western novel

|-

|Russell Banks

|Continental Drift

|

|-

|Anne Tyler

|The Accidental Tourist

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1987

|Peter Taylor

|A Summons to Memphis

|Novel

|-

|Donald Barthelme

|Paradise

|

|-

|Norman Rush

|Whites

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1988

|Toni Morrison

|Beloved

|Novel

|-

|Diane Johnson

|Persian Nights

|

|-

|Alice McDermott

|That Night

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="2" scope="row"|1989

|Anne Tyler

|Breathing Lessons

|Novel

|-

|Raymond Carver

|Where I'm Calling From

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="2" scope="row"|1990

|Oscar Hijuelos

|The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

|Novel

|-

|E. L. Doctorow

|Billy Bathgate

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1991

|John Updike

|Rabbit At Rest

|Novel

|-

|Linda Hogan

|Mean Spirit

|

|-

|Tim O'Brien

|The Things They Carried

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="4" scope="row"|1992

|Jane Smiley

|A Thousand Acres

|Domestic realism

|-

|David Gates

|Jernigan

|

|-

|Robert M. Pirsig

|Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

|

|-

|Don DeLillo

|Mao II

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1993

|Robert Olen Butler

|A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

|Short story collection

|-

|Alice McDermott

|At Weddings and Wakes

|

|-

|Joyce Carol Oates

|Black Water

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1994

|E. Annie Proulx

|The Shipping News

|Novel

|-

|Philip Roth

|Operation Shylock: A Confession

|

|-

|Reynolds Price

|The Collected Stories

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1995

|Carol Shields

|The Stone Diaries

|Novel

|-

|Grace Paley

|The Collected Stories

|

|-

|Joyce Carol Oates

|What I Lived For

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1996

|Richard Ford

|Independence Day

|Novel

|-

|Oscar Hijuelos

|Mr. Ives' Christmas

|

|-

|Philip Roth

|Sabbath's Theater

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1997

|Steven Millhauser

|Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

|Novel

|-

|Joanna Scott

|The Manikin

|

|-

|Ursula K. Le Guin

|Unlocking the Air and Other Stories

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1998

|Philip Roth

|American Pastoral

|Novel

|-

|Robert Stone

|Bear and His Daughter: Stories

|

|-

|Don DeLillo

|Underworld

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|1999

|Michael Cunningham

|The Hours

|historical fiction

|-

|Russell Banks

|Cloudsplitter

|

|-

|Barbara Kingsolver

|The Poisonwood Bible

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2000

|Jhumpa Lahiri

|Interpreter of Maladies

|Short story collection

|-

|Annie Proulx

|Close Range: Wyoming Stories

|

|-

|Ha Jin

|Waiting

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2001

|Michael Chabon

|The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

|Historical fiction

|-

|Joyce Carol Oates

|Blonde

|

|-

|Joy Williams

|The Quick and the Dead

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2002

|Richard Russo

|Empire Falls

| Novel

|-

|Colson Whitehead

|John Henry Days

|

|-

|Jonathan Franzen

|The Corrections

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2003

|Jeffrey Eugenides

|Middlesex

|Family saga

|-

|Andrea Barrett

|Servants of the Map: Stories

|

|-

|Adam Haslett

|You Are Not a Stranger Here

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2004

|Edward P. Jones

|The Known World

|Historical fiction

|-

|Susan Choi

|American Woman

|

|-

|Marianne Wiggins

|Evidence of Things Unseen

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2005

|Marilynne Robinson

|Gilead

|Epistolary novel

|-

|Ward Just

|An Unfinished Season

|

|-

|Ha Jin

|War Trash

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2006

|Geraldine Brooks

|March

|Historical fiction

|-

|Lee Martin

|The Bright Forever

|

|-

|E. L. Doctorow

|The March

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2007

|Cormac McCarthy

|The Road

|Post-apocalyptic fiction

|-

|Alice McDermott

|After This

|

|-

|Richard Powers

|The Echo Maker

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2008

|Junot Díaz

|The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

|Novel

|-

|Lore Segal

|Shakespeare's Kitchen

|

|-

|Denis Johnson

|Tree of Smoke

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2009

|Elizabeth Strout

|Olive Kitteridge

|Short story collection

|-

|Christine Schutt

|All Souls

|

|-

|Louise Erdrich

|The Plague of Doves

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2010

|Paul Harding

|Tinkers

|Novel

|-

|Daniyal Mueenuddin

|In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

|

|-

|Lydia Millet

|Love in Infant Monkeys

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2011

|Jennifer Egan

|A Visit from the Goon Squad

|Short story collection

|-

|Jonathan Dee

|The Privileges

|

|-

|Chang-rae Lee

|The Surrendered

|

|-

! rowspan="4" scope="row"|2012

|colspan=3 align=center |Not awarded

|-

|Karen Russell

|Swamplandia!

|

|-

|

|The Pale King (posthumously)

|

|-

|Denis Johnson

|Train Dreams

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2013

|Adam Johnson

|The Orphan Master's Son

|Novel

|-

|Eowyn Ivey

|The Snow Child

|

|-

|Nathan Englander

|What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2014

|Donna Tartt

|The Goldfinch

|Novel

|-

|Philipp Meyer

|The Son

|

|-

|Bob Shacochis

|The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="4" scope="row"|2015

|Anthony Doerr

|All the Light We Cannot See

|War novel

|-

|Richard Ford

|Let Me Be Frank With You

|

|-

|Joyce Carol Oates

|Lovely, Dark, Deep

|

|-

|Laila Lalami

|The Moor's Account

|

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2016

|Viet Thanh Nguyen

|The Sympathizer

|Novel

|-

|Kelly Link

|Get in Trouble: Stories

|

|-

|Margaret Verble

|Maud's Line

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2017

|Colson Whitehead

|The Underground Railroad

|

|-

|Adam Haslett

|Imagine Me Gone

|

|-

|C. E. Morgan

|The Sport of Kings

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2018

|Andrew Sean Greer

|Less

|Satire

|-

|Hernan Diaz

|In the Distance

|

|-

|Elif Batuman

|The Idiot

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2019

|Richard Powers

|The Overstory

|Novel

|-

|Rebecca Makkai

|The Great Believers

|

|-

|Tommy Orange

|There There

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2020

|Colson Whitehead

|The Nickel Boys

|Novel

|-

|Ann Patchett

|The Dutch House

|

|-

|Ben Lerner

|The Topeka School

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2021

|Louise Erdrich

|The Night Watchman

|Novel

|-

|Daniel Mason

|A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth

|

|-

|Percival Everett

|Telephone

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2022

|Joshua Cohen

|The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family

|Novel

|-

|Francisco Goldman

|Monkey Boy

|

|-

|Gayl Jones

|Palmares

|

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2023

|Barbara Kingsolver

|Demon Copperhead

|Novel

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

|Hernan Diaz

|Trust

|Novel

|-

|Vauhini Vara

|The Immortal King Rao

|

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="3" scope="row"|2024

|Jayne Anne Phillips

|Night Watch

|Novel

|-

|Ed Park

|Same Bed Different Dreams

|

|-

|Yiyun Li

|Wednesday's Child

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="4" scope="row"|2025

|Percival Everett

|James

|Novel

|-

|Rita Bullwinkel

|Headshot: A Novel

|

|-

|Stacey Levine

|Mice 1961

|

|-

|Gayl Jones

|The Unicorn Woman

|

|-

|- style="background:#fff7c9"

! rowspan="4" scope="row"|2026

|Daniel Kraus

|Angel Down

|Novel

|-

|Katie Kitamura

|Audition

|

|-

|Torrey Peters

|Stag Dance: A Quartet

|

|}

Repeat winners

Four writers to date have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction multiple times, one nominally in the novel category and two in the general fiction category. Ernest Hemingway was selected by the 1941 and 1953 juries, but the former was overturned with no award given that year.

  • Booth Tarkington, 1919, 1922
  • William Faulkner, 1955, 1963 (awarded posthumously)
  • John Updike, 1982, 1991
  • Colson Whitehead, 2017, 2020

Authors with multiple nominations

4 nominations

  • Joyce Carol Oates
  • Philip Roth

3 nominations

  • Alice McDermott
  • Anne Tyler
  • Colson Whitehead

2 nominations

  • Russell Banks
  • Raymond Carver
  • Don DeLillo
  • Hernan Diaz
  • E. L. Doctorow
  • Louise Erdrich
  • Percival Everett
  • Richard Ford
  • Adam Haslett
  • Oscar Hijuelos
  • Ha Jin
  • Denis Johnson
  • Gayl Jones
  • Barbara Kingsolver
  • Richard Powers
  • Annie Proulx
  • Marilynne Robinson
  • Robert Stone
  • John Updike

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Official website for Pulitzer Prize: for the Novel and for Fiction
  • The Pulitzer Prize Thumbnails Project
  • Michael's Cunningham's "Letter from the Pulitzer Fiction Jury: What Really Happened This Year," The New Yorker — Part One (July 9, 2012) and Part Two (July 10, 2012)