LITERATURE
Awards
Authors with the Most Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Award Wins
This list features the authors that have been awarded the most Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction in history.
RANK | AUTHOR | AWARD WINS | BOOKS |
1 | Booth Tarkington | 2 | The Magnificent Ambersons (1919) Alice Adams (1922) |
2 | William Faulkner | 2 | A Fable (1955) The Reivers (1963) |
3 | John Updike | 2 | Rabbit Is Rich (1982) Rabbit At Rest (1991) |
4 | Colson Whitehead | 2 | The Underground Railroad (2017) The Nickel Boys (2020) |
5 | Ernest Poole | 1 | His Family (1918) |
6 | Edith Wharton | 1 | The Age of Innocence (1921) |
7 | Willa Cather | 1 | One of Ours (1923) |
8 | Margaret Wilson | 1 | The Able McLaughlins (1924) |
9 | Edna Ferber | 1 | So Big (1925) |
10 | Sinclair Lewis | 1 | Arrowsmith (1926) |
11 | Louis Broomfield | 1 | Early Autumn (1927) |
12 | Thornton Wilder | 1 | The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1928) |
13 | Julia Peterkin | 1 | Scarlet Sister Mary (1929) |
14 | Oliver La Farge | 1 | Laughing Boy (1930) |
15 | Margaret Ayer Barnes | 1 | Years of Grace (1931) |
16 | Pearl S. Buck | 1 | The Good Earth (1932) |
17 | T. S. Stribling | 1 | The Store (1933) |
18 | Caroline Miller | 1 | Lamb in His Bosom (1934) |
19 | Josephine Winslow Johnson | 1 | Now in November (1935) |
20 | Harold L. Davis | 1 | Honey in the Horn (1936) |
21 | Margaret Mitchell | 1 | Gone with the Wind (1937) |
22 | John Phillips Marquand | 1 | The Late George Apley (1938) |
23 | Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings | 1 | The Yearling (1939) |
24 | John Steinbeck | 1 | The Grapes of Wrath (1940) |
25 | Ellen Glasgow | 1 | In This Our Life (1942) |
26 | Upton Sinclair | 1 | Dragon’s Teeth (1943) |
27 | Martin Flavin | 1 | Journey in the Dark (1944) |
28 | John Hersey | 1 | A Bell for Adano (1945) |
29 | Robert Penn Warren | 1 | All the King’s Men (1947) |
30 | James A. Michener | 1 | Tales of the South Pacific (1948) |
31 | James Gould Cozzens | 1 | Guard of Honor (1949) |
32 | A. B. Guthrie | 1 | The Way West (1950) |
33 | Conrad Richter | 1 | The Town (1951) |
34 | Herman Wouk | 1 | The Caine Mutiny (1952) |
35 | Ernest Hemingway | 1 | The Old Man and the Sea (1953) |
36 | MacKinlay Kantor | 1 | Andersonville (1956) |
37 | James Agee | 1 | A Death in the Family (1958) |
38 | Robert Lewis Taylor | 1 | The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1959) |
39 | Allen Dury | 1 | Advise and Consent (1960) |
40 | Harper Lee | 1 | To Kill a Mockingbird (1961) |
41 | Edwin O’Connor | 1 | The Edge of Sadness (1962) |
42 | Shirley Ann Grau | 1 | The Keepers of the House (1965) |
43 | Katherine Anne Porter | 1 | Collected Stories (1966) |
44 | Bernard Malamud | 1 | The Fixer (1967) |
45 | William Styron | 1 | The Confessions of Nat Turner (1968) |
46 | N. Scott Momaday | 1 | House Made of Dawn (1969) |
47 | Jean Stafford | 1 | Collected Stories (1970) |
48 | Wallace Stegner | 1 | Angel of Repose (1972) |
49 | Eudora Welty | 1 | The Optimist’s Daughter (1973) |
50 | Michael Shaara | 1 | The Killer Angels (1975) |
51 | Saul Bellow | 1 | Humboldt’s Gift (1976) |
52 | James Alan McPherson | 1 | Elbow Room (1978) |
53 | John Cheever | 1 | The Stories of John Cheever (1979) |
54 | Norman Mailer | 1 | The Executioner’s Song (1980) |
55 | John Kennedy Toole | 1 | A Confederacy of Dunces (1981) |
56 | Alice Walker | 1 | The Color Purple (1983) |
57 | William Kennedy | 1 | Ironweed (1984) |
58 | Alison Lurie | 1 | Foreign Affairs (1985) |
59 | Larry McMurty | 1 | Lonesome Dove (1986) |
60 | Peter Taylor | 1 | A Summon to Memphis (1987) |
61 | Toni Morrison | 1 | Beloved (1988) |
62 | Anne Tyler | 1 | Breathing Lessons (1989) |
63 | Oscar Hijuelos | 1 | The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1990) |
64 | Jane Smiley | 1 | A Thousand Acres (1992) |
65 | Robert Olen Butler | 1 | A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1993) |
66 | E. Annie Proulx | 1 | The Shipping News (1994) |
67 | Carol Shields | 1 | The Stone Diaries (1995) |
68 | Richard Ford | 1 | Independence Day (1996) |
69 | Steven Millhauser | 1 | Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1997) |
70 | Philip Roth | 1 | American Pastoral (1998) |
71 | Michael Cunningham | 1 | The Hours (1999) |
72 | Jhumpa Lahiri | 1 | Interpreter of Maladies (2000) |
73 | Michael Chabon | 1 | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2001) |
74 | Richard Russo | 1 | Empire Falls (2002) |
75 | Jeffrey Eugenides | 1 | Middlesex (2003) |
76 | Edward P. Jones | 1 | The Known World (2004) |
77 | Marilynne Robinson | 1 | Gilead (2005) |
78 | Geraldine Brooks | 1 | March (2006) |
79 | Cormac McCarthy | 1 | The Road (2007) |
80 | Junot Díaz | 1 | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008) |
81 | Elizabeth Strout | 1 | Olive Kitteridge (2009) |
82 | Paul Harding | 1 | Tinkers (2010) |
83 | Jennifer Egan | 1 | A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011) |
84 | Adam Johnson | 1 | The Orphan Master’s Son (2013) |
85 | Donna Tartt | 1 | The Goldfinch (2014) |
86 | Anthony Doerr | 1 | All the Light We Cannot See (2015) |
87 | Viet Thanh Nguyen | 1 | The Sympathizer (2016) |
88 | Andrew Sean Greer | 1 | Less (2018) |
89 | Richard Powers | 1 | The Overstory (2019) |
90 | Louise Erdrich | 1 | The Night Watchman (2021) |
91 | Joshua Cohen | 1 | The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family (2022) |
92 | Hernan Diaz | 1 | Trust (2023) |
93 | Barbara Kingsolver | 1 | Demon Cooperhead (2023) |
94 | Jayne Anne Phillips | 1 | Night Watch (2024) |
95 | Percival Everett | 1 | James (2025) |
References
