what is the pulitzer prize?

To understand the prize, you need to know its history and the man who made it. Joseph Pulitzer was a rich Hungarian newspaper publisher. He wanted to make a lasting impact on the world. Thus, in his will he left his idea for the prize.

In 1917, six years after Joseph Pulitzer's death, the Pulitzer Prize in literature was established. While the prize may have started with just the one category in literature. Today, the prize is one of the most prestigious honors across multiple art forms. It includes 22 different categories, such as fiction, history, journalism, drama, music, and more.

Columbia University oversees the prize and its winners. Receiving this honor is considered an award on its own. However, the winner of 20 of the categories also gets $15,000. The winners of the journalism competition in the public service division also receive a gold medal.

pulitzer prize-winning books of this century

So, you're looking for new reading recommendations and thought the Pulitzer Prize history might have some good suggestions? Here's a list of winners throughout this century to get you started.

Fiction Winners

2025: James by Percival Everett

2024: Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips

2023: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

2023: Trust by Hernan Diaz

2022: The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family by Joshua Cohen

2021: The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

2020: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

2019: The Overstory by Richard Powers

2018: Less by Andrew Sean Greer

2017: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

2016: The Sympathizer: A Novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen

2015: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

2014: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

2013: The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

2011: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

2010: Tinkers by Paul Harding

2009: Olive Kitteridge: Fiction by Elizabeth Strout

2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2006: March by Geraldine Brooks

2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

2004: The Known World by Edward P Jones

2003: Middlesex by Eugenides Jeffrey

2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo

2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

General nonfiction

2025: To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans

2024: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall

2023: His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justiceby Robert Samuels - Toluse Olorunnipa

2022: Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott

2021: Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino

2020: The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care by Anne Boyer

2020: The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin

2019: Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America by Eliza Griswold

2018: Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman

2017: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

2016:Black Flags: The Rise of Isis by Joby Warrick

2015: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

2014: Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin

2013: Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King

2012: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

2011: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

2010: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E Hoffman

2009: Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A Blackmon

2008: The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedlander

2007: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright

2006: Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins

2005: Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the Cia, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

2004: Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum

2003: A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power

2002: Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter

2001: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P Bix

2000: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W Dower

Biography winners

2025: Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts

2024: King: A Life by Jonathan Eig

2024: Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo

2023: G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

2022: Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert - Erin I Kelly - Bryan Stevenson

2021: The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne - Tamara Payne

2020: Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser

2019: The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C Stewart

2018: Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

2017: The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar

2016: Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

2015: The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer
2014: Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall

2013: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss

2012: George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis

2011: Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

2010: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T J Stiles

2009: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham

2008: Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson

2007: The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher by Debby Applegate

2006: American Prometheus: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture Oppenheimer by Kai Bird - Martin J Sherwin

2005: de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens - Annalyn Swan

2004: Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman

2003: Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III by Robert A Caro

2002: John Adams by David McCullough

2001: W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 by David Levering Lewis

2000: Vera: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov by Stacy Schiff

Memoir or Autobiography

2025: Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls

2024: Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice by Cristina Rivera Garza

2023: Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu

History Winners

2025: Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda L Fields-Black & Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal

2024: No Right to an Honest Living : The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era by Jacqueline Jones

2023: Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power by Jefferson Cowie

2022: Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace

2022: Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer

2021: Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain

2020: Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W Caleb McDaniel

2019: Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W Blight

2018: The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E Davis

2017: Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson

2016: Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T. J. Stiles

2015: Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A Fenn

2014: The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor

2013: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall

2012: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable

2011: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner

2010: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

2009: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed

2008: What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe

2007: The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts - Hank Klibanoff

2006: Polio: An American Story by David M Oshinsky

2005: Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer

2004: A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration by Steven Hahn

2003: An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson

2002: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand

2001: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J Ellis

2000: Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 by David M Kennedy

Drama

2025: Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

2024: Primary Trust by Eboni Booth

2023: English by Sanaz Toossi

2022: Fat Ham by James Ijames

2021: The Hot Wing King by Katori Hall

2020: A Strange Loop by Michael R Jackson

2019: Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury

2018: Cost of Living by Martyna Majok

2017: Sweat by Lynn Nottage

2016: Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda - Jeremy McCarter

2015: Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis

2014: The Flick by Annie Baker

2013: Disgraced: A Play by Ayad Akhtar

2012: Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes

2011: Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris

2010: Next to Normal (Vocal Selections): Piano/Vocal/Chords by Tom Kitt - Brian Yorkey

2009: Ruined (TCG Edition) by Lynn Nottage

2008: August: Osage County (TCG Edition) by Tracy Letts

2007: Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire

2005: Doubt by John Patrick Shanley

2004: I Am My Own Wife: Studies for a Play about the Life of Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf by Wright Doug

2003: Anna in the Tropicsby Nilo Cruz

2002: Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks

2001: Proof: A Play by David Auburn

2000: Dinner with Friends by Donald Margulies

Poetry

2025: New and Selected Poems by Marie Howe

2024: Tripas by Brandon Som

2023: Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 by Carl Phillips

2022: Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss

2021: Postcolonial Love Poem: Poems by Natalie Diaz

2020: The Tradition by Jericho Brown

2019: Be with by Forrest Gander

2018: Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 by Frank Bidart

2017: Olio by Tyehimba Jess

2016: Ozone Journal by Peter Balakian

2015: Digest by Gregory Pardlo

2014: 3 Sections: Poems by Vijay Seshadri

2013: Stag's Leap by Sharon Olds

2012: Life on Mars by Tracy K Smith

2011: The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan

2010: Versed by Rae Armantrout

2009The Shadow of Sirius by W S Merwin

2008: Failure by Philip Schultz

2007: Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 by Robert Hass

2006: Native Guard: Poems by Natasha Trethewey

2005: Late Wife: Poems by Claudia Emerson

2004:Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser

2003: Walking to Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright

2002: Moy Sand and Gravel by Paul Muldoon

2001: Practical Gods by Carl Dennis

2000: Different Hours: Poems by Stephen Dunn

A lasting legacy

Joseph Pulitzer wanted to leave a mark on the world. He succeeded when he created the Pulitzer Prize. Over a hundred years later and it remains one of the most prestigious awards a writer can achieve. Beyond that, it is a mark of quality. Whether you're a fan of fiction, various nonfiction, drama, or poetry these winners are sure to have what you're looking for.

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