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
2026: Angel Down by Daniel Kraus
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
2026: There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone
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
2026: Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution by Amanda Vaill
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
2026: Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li
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
2026: We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore
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
2026: Liberation by Bess Wohl
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
2026: Ars Poeticas by Juliana Spahr
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.