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Literature & Language

Literary Prizes

Major literary awards and notable laureates.

A study reference, not a substitute for primary sources. Updated 2026-06-02.

Nobel Prize in Literature

Awarded annually by the Swedish Academy (Stockholm) since 1901 “for the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.” The prize is literary, not tied to a single book; it honors a body of work. Announcements come each October. The prize was not awarded in some years (e.g., 1940–1943, during World War II, and 2018 due to an internal crisis at the Swedish Academy).

Criteria and notable patterns

Selected laureates

Year Laureate Country Note
1901 Sully Prudhomme France First ever Nobel in Literature; poet
1902 Theodor Mommsen Germany Historian; The History of Rome
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Norway Playwright and novelist; national poet of Norway (verify: year)
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz Poland Quo Vadis, The Teutonic Knights
1907 Rudyard Kipling UK The Jungle Book, Kim; first English-language laureate
1913 Rabindranath Tagore India Gitanjali; first non-European laureate
1920 Knut Hamsun Norway Hunger, Growth of the Soil
1921 Anatole France France Satirical novelist and critic
1923 W. B. Yeats Ireland Major modernist poet
1925 George Bernard Shaw Ireland/UK Playwright (Pygmalion, Saint Joan)
1929 Thomas Mann Germany The Magic Mountain, Buddenbrooks
1930 Sinclair Lewis USA First American laureate; Main Street, Babbitt
1934 Luigi Pirandello Italy Playwright (Six Characters in Search of an Author)
1936 Eugene O’Neill USA Major American playwright (Long Day’s Journey into Night)
1938 Pearl Buck USA The Good Earth; second American woman to win
1945 Gabriela Mistral Chile Poet; first Latin American laureate
1946 Hermann Hesse Germany/Switzerland Steppenwolf, The Glass Bead Game
1947 André Gide France The Immoralist, The Counterfeiters
1948 T. S. Eliot UK/USA The Waste Land
1949 William Faulkner USA The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying
1950 Bertrand Russell UK Philosopher and essayist (verify: Literature, not Peace)
1953 Winston Churchill UK For historical and biographical writing; The Second World War (verify: year)
1954 Ernest Hemingway USA The Old Man and the Sea
1957 Albert Camus France The Stranger, The Plague
1958 Boris Pasternak USSR Doctor Zhivago; declined under Soviet pressure (verify: circumstances)
1962 John Steinbeck USA The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre France Existentialist philosopher; declined the prize (verify: year)
1969 Samuel Beckett Ireland/France Waiting for Godot
1970 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn USSR The Gulag Archipelago, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
1971 Pablo Neruda Chile Major Spanish-language poet
1972 Heinrich Böll West Germany Postwar German fiction
1976 Saul Bellow USA Herzog, Humboldt’s Gift
1980 Czesław Miłosz Poland/USA The Captive Mind
1982 Gabriel García Márquez Colombia One Hundred Years of Solitude
1983 William Golding UK Lord of the Flies
1986 Wole Soyinka Nigeria First African laureate; playwright and novelist
1987 Joseph Brodsky USSR/USA Poet; dissident exiled from the Soviet Union
1988 Naguib Mahfouz Egypt First Arab-language laureate; Cairo Trilogy
1991 Nadine Gordimer South Africa Anti-apartheid novelist
1992 Derek Walcott St. Lucia/Trinidad Poet and playwright; Omeros
1993 Toni Morrison USA Beloved, Song of Solomon
1994 Kenzaburō Ōe Japan A Personal Matter
1995 Seamus Heaney Ireland Poet (Opened Ground, Death of a Naturalist)
1996 Wisława Szymborska Poland Poet
1998 José Saramago Portugal Blindness
2000 Gao Xingjian China/France Soul Mountain
2001 V. S. Naipaul Trinidad/UK A House for Mr Biswas
2003 J. M. Coetzee South Africa Disgrace, Waiting for the Barbarians
2004 Elfriede Jelinek Austria The Piano Teacher
2005 Harold Pinter UK Playwright (The Birthday Party, Betrayal)
2006 Orhan Pamuk Turkey My Name Is Red, Snow
2007 Doris Lessing UK The Golden Notebook
2008 J. M. G. Le Clézio France/Mauritius Postcolonial fiction
2010 Mario Vargas Llosa Peru The Feast of the Goat
2012 Mo Yan China Red Sorghum
2013 Alice Munro Canada Short story writer; often called “Canada’s Chekhov”
2014 Patrick Modiano France Memory and the Nazi Occupation
2015 Svetlana Alexievich Belarus Oral history/nonfiction (Voices from Chernobyl); first journalist to win
2016 Bob Dylan USA Singer-songwriter; controversial choice
2017 Kazuo Ishiguro UK/Japan The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go
2019 Peter Handke Austria Controversial due to views on Yugoslav wars
2020 Louise Glück USA Poet (The Wild Iris)
2021 Abdulrazak Gurnah Tanzania/UK Postcolonial fiction; Paradise
2022 Annie Ernaux France Autofiction (The Years, Happening)

Note: 2018 was not awarded; Olga Tokarczuk (Poland) received the 2018 prize in 2019 alongside Peter Handke.

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (Novel)

Administered by Columbia University; awarded annually since 1918 for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably about American life. Some years the jury declines to award the prize.

Selected winners

Year Author Title
1939 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings The Yearling
1940 John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath
1953 Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
1961 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird
1963 William Faulkner The Reivers (posthumous)
1966 Katherine Anne Porter The Collected Stories
1972 Wallace Stegner Angle of Repose
1975 Michael Shaara The Killer Angels
1983 Alice Walker The Color Purple
1985 Alison Lurie Foreign Affairs
1988 Toni Morrison Beloved
1989 Anne Tyler Breathing Lessons
1993 Robert Olen Butler A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
1998 Philip Roth American Pastoral
2000 Jhumpa Lahiri Interpreter of Maladies
2004 Edward P. Jones The Known World
2007 Cormac McCarthy The Road
2008 Junot Díaz The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
2009 Elizabeth Strout Olive Kitteridge
2013 Adam Johnson The Orphan Master’s Son
2016 Viet Thanh Nguyen The Sympathizer
2017 Colson Whitehead The Underground Railroad
2019 Richard Powers The Overstory
2022 Colson Whitehead The Nickel Boys (Whitehead is one of the few two-time fiction winners)

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and Drama

Poetry (selected)

Drama (selected)

Booker Prize (UK/Ireland/Commonwealth)

Awarded for the best original novel written in English and published in the UK. Formerly restricted to Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens; since 2014 open to any author writing in English regardless of nationality.

Selected winners

Year Author Title Country
1969 P. H. Newby Something to Answer For UK (inaugural)
1971 V. S. Naipaul In a Free State Trinidad/UK
1973 J. G. Farrell The Siege of Krishnapur UK
1978 Iris Murdoch The Sea, the Sea UK
1980 William Golding Rites of Passage UK
1981 Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children India/UK
1982 Thomas Keneally Schindler’s Ark Australia
1983 J. M. Coetzee Life & Times of Michael K South Africa
1984 Anita Brookner Hotel du Lac UK
1985 Keri Hulme The Bone People New Zealand
1986 Kingsley Amis The Old Devils UK
1989 Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day UK
1990 A. S. Byatt Possession UK
1991 Ben Okri The Famished Road Nigeria
1992 Michael Ondaatje / Barry Unsworth The English Patient / Sacred Hunger Canada/UK (tie)
1993 Roddy Doyle Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha Ireland
1994 James Kelman How Late It Was, How Late UK
1995 Pat Barker The Ghost Road UK
1997 Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things India
1998 Ian McEwan Amsterdam UK
1999 J. M. Coetzee Disgrace South Africa (his second Booker)
2000 Margaret Atwood The Blind Assassin Canada
2001 Peter Carey True History of the Kelly Gang Australia
2002 Yann Martel Life of Pi Canada
2003 DBC Pierre Vernon God Little Australia
2004 Alan Hollinghurst The Line of Beauty UK
2005 John Banville The Sea Ireland
2006 Kiran Desai The Inheritance of Loss India
2007 Anne Enright The Gathering Ireland
2008 Aravind Adiga The White Tiger India
2009 Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall UK
2011 Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending UK
2012 Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies UK (her second Booker)
2013 Eleanor Catton The Luminaries New Zealand
2014 Richard Flanagan The Narrow Road to the Deep North Australia
2015 Marlon James A Brief History of Seven Killings Jamaica
2016 Paul Beatty The Sellout USA (first American winner)
2017 George Saunders Lincoln in the Bardo USA
2018 Anna Burns Milkman Northern Ireland
2019 Margaret Atwood / Bernardine Evaristo The Testaments / Girl, Woman, Other Canada/UK (tie)
2020 Douglas Stuart Shuggie Bain Scotland/USA
2021 Damon Galgut The Promise South Africa
2022 Shehan Karunatilaka The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida Sri Lanka
2023 Paul Lynch Prophet Song Ireland

International Booker Prize

Awarded for a single work of fiction translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. Prize is split equally between author and translator. Initially awarded biennially from 2005; restructured in 2016 to an annual prize focused exclusively on translated fiction.

Selected winners

National Book Award (USA)

Given by the National Book Foundation since 1950. Four main categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature (added 1996). Considered the most prestigious all-American literary prize alongside the Pulitzer.

Fiction (selected)

Poetry (selected)

Hugo Award

Science fiction’s oldest fan-voted award, given at Worldcon annually since 1953. Named after Hugo Gernsback, founder of Amazing Stories. Categories include novel, novella, novelette, short story, and others.

Novel — selected winners

Nebula Award

Given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) since 1966; a peer-voted award (writers vote, not fans). Often runs alongside the Hugo; the two awards frequently overlap but diverge.

Novel — selected winners

Newbery Medal

Awarded by the American Library Association (ALA) since 1922 for the most distinguished contribution to American children’s literature published the preceding year. Named after 18th-century British bookseller John Newbery. One of the oldest children’s book awards in the world.

Selected winners

Caldecott Medal

Also awarded by the ALA since 1938 for the most distinguished American picture book illustration. Named after British illustrator Randolph Caldecott. Awarded simultaneously with one or more Honor designations.

Selected winners

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

Given by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation since 1981 for the best published work of American fiction in a given year. Named for William Faulkner, who used his Nobel Prize money to establish awards for young writers. Peer-judged by published fiction writers.

Selected winners

Major Poetry Prizes

T. S. Eliot Prize (UK)

Awarded since 1993 by the Poetry Book Society for the best new collection of poetry published in the UK or Ireland. Named after T. S. Eliot.

Griffin Poetry Prize (Canada)

International prize founded in 2001 by entrepreneur Scott Griffin; awarded for collections in English or translated into English.

Yale Series of Younger Poets

Oldest annual literary competition in the United States (since 1919); for poets who have not previously published a full-length collection.

Poet Laureate (USA)

Appointed by the Librarian of Congress since 1986 (formerly Consultant in Poetry since 1937). Recent holders include Tracy K. Smith (2017–2019), Joy Harjo (2019–2022, three terms), and Ada Limón (2022–).

UK Poet Laureate

Appointed by the monarch on advice of the Prime Minister; a royal appointment. Recent holders include Carol Ann Duffy (2009–2019) and Simon Armitage (2019–).

Bollingen Prize in Poetry (USA)

Administered by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale (originally a Library of Congress prize) since 1948; given biennially to an American poet for lifetime achievement or a distinguished collection.

Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (USA)

Awarded by the Poetry Foundation (Chicago) since 1986 for lifetime achievement in poetry; among the largest prizes in American poetry at $100,000.

Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award (USA)

Given by Claremont Graduate University since 1993 for a mid-career American poet; $100,000, one of the richest annual poetry prizes.

Prix Goncourt (France)

France’s most prestigious literary prize, awarded since 1903 by the Académie Goncourt (ten members) for the best imaginative prose work of the year, almost always a novel. The prize itself is symbolic (€10), but the commercial impact is enormous — winners typically sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

Selected winners

Year Author Title Note
1919 Marcel Proust À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs Vol. 2 of In Search of Lost Time
1944 Elsa Triolet Le premier accroc coûte deux cents francs First woman to win
1954 Simone de Beauvoir The Mandarins Existentialist novel
1984 Marguerite Duras L’Amant (The Lover) International bestseller
1987 Tahar Ben Jelloun La Nuit sacrée First African-born winner
1998 Paule Constant Confidence pour confidence  
2010 Michel Houellebecq La carte et le territoire  
2021 Mohamed Mbougar Sarr La Plus Secrète Mémoire des hommes First sub-Saharan African winner

Premio Cervantes (Spain/Latin America)

The most prestigious prize in the Spanish-language literary world, awarded annually since 1976 by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Honors a writer’s lifetime body of work. Named after Miguel de Cervantes; often called the “Spanish Nobel.”

Selected winners

Premio Strega (Italy)

Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, awarded since 1947 by the Fondazione Maria e Goffredo Bellonci and sponsored by the Strega liqueur company. Judged by a panel of about 400 “Friends of Sunday” (intellectuals, writers, publishers). Awarded each July in Rome.

Selected winners

Akutagawa Prize & Naoki Prize (Japan)

Both awarded twice yearly (January and July) since 1935 by the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature.

Notable Akutagawa winners

Miles Franklin Literary Award (Australia)

Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, established by the estate of author Miles Franklin (My Brilliant Career); awarded since 1957 for the novel that best presents Australian life. Named after Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin.

Selected winners

Scotiabank Giller Prize (Canada)

Canada’s richest literary award (CAD $100,000 to the winner), awarded since 1994 for the best English-language Canadian novel or short story collection. Named after journalist Doris Giller by her husband Jack Rabinovitch; subsequently sponsored by Scotiabank.

Selected winners

Costa Book Awards (formerly Whitbread, UK)

British prizes awarded since 1971 (as the Whitbread) in five categories: Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry, and Children’s Book, with an overall Book of the Year selected from category winners. Renamed “Costa” in 2006 after the coffee chain assumed sponsorship.

Selected Book of the Year winners

Year Author Title Category
1985 Jeanette Winterson Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit First Novel
1992 Jeff Torrington Swing Hammer Swing! Novel
1993 Joan Brady Theory of War Novel
1998 Ted Hughes Birthday Letters Poetry
2001 Philip Pullman The Amber Spyglass Children’s (first children’s book to win overall)
2003 Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Novel
2005 Hilary Mantel Beyond Black Novel
2017 Fiona Mozley Elmet First Novel

National Book Critics Circle Award (USA)

Awarded since 1975 by the National Book Critics Circle, a professional organization of book reviewers and critics. Separate from the National Book Award; categories include Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Poetry, Criticism, and Autobiography.

Fiction (selected winners)

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award

A special NBCC honor; past recipients include Toni Morrison, John Updike, and Grace Paley.

Neustadt International Prize for Literature (USA)

Biennial prize awarded by the University of Oklahoma and its journal World Literature Today since 1969; sometimes called the “American Nobel” for its focus on international writers. Nominations made by a jury of international writers.

Selected laureates

Edgar Award (Mystery Writers of America)

Formally the Edgar Allan Poe Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America since 1954 for superior works of crime, mystery, and suspense writing. Multiple categories including Best Novel, Best First Novel, Best Short Story, and Grand Master.

Best Novel (selected winners)

Grand Master (lifetime achievement; selected)

Caine Prize for African Writing (UK)

Awarded since 2000 for the best short story by an African writer published in English; administered by a UK foundation. Often called the “African Booker.” Named after Sir Michael Caine, former chairman of Booker plc. Prize: £10,000.

Selected winners

Camões Prize (Portugal/Brazil)

The most prestigious prize for Portuguese-language literature, awarded jointly by the governments of Portugal and Brazil since 1989. Honors a lifetime body of work; named after the Renaissance poet Luís de Camões (Os Lusíadas).

Selected laureates

verify: (additional)

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