7 Acclaimed Novelists Honored with the Pulitzer Prize

Founded through the legacy of newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer, the Pulitzer Prizes were first conferred in 1917. The Pulitzer Prize for the Novel was introduced the following year, awarded to Ernest Poole for His Family. By the 1940s, the category expanded to include all forms of fiction. Over the years, literary giants like Alice Walker, Willa Cather, Philip Roth, Michael Chabon, and Toni Morrison have been honored. Below, we highlight additional authors whose works have earned this esteemed recognition. 

1. Jhumpa Lahiri

As a child, Jhumpa Lahiri collaborated with a friend to write books during recess at the age of 7. However, her serious writing journey began in graduate school, where she balanced her academic responsibilities with her passion for storytelling. It was during this period that the title of her debut work, Interpreter of Maladies, struck her. The inspiration came after an encounter with an acquaintance who worked as a translator in a medical setting, bridging communication between doctors and patients. She later recounted, “While walking home, the phrase interpreter of maladies suddenly came to mind, perfectly capturing the essence of that role. I quickly wrote it down before it slipped away.”

Despite numerous rejections of her short stories, Interpreter of Maladies was finally published in 1999 and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Reflecting on the achievement, Lahiri remarked, “I always associated the Pulitzer with seasoned writers late in their careers.” Her father’s advice was simple: “Accept it with grace, keep it in perspective, and continue moving forward.” 

2. Colson Whitehead

With nine published works, Whitehead received his first Pulitzer nomination in 2002. He secured his initial Pulitzer in 2017 for The Underground Railroad, a novel praised by the jury as “a brilliant fusion of realism and allegory, blending the brutality of slavery with the intensity of escape into a narrative that resonates with modern America.” He claimed his second Pulitzer in 2020 for The Nickel Boys, joining the elite group of only four authors to have earned two Pulitzers in Fiction. John Updike, another dual winner, once remarked that Whitehead’s prose “fulfills the true purpose of writing—it revitalizes our perception of the world.”

3. Edith Wharton

In 1921, Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street was the jury’s first choice for the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. However, the trustees overruled the decision, deeming it unfit for the award’s criteria, which required the work to be “wholesome.” Consequently, the honor was bestowed upon Edith Wharton for her 12th novel, The Age of Innocence, marking her as the first female recipient of a Pulitzer Prize.

In her autobiography, Wharton reflected that writing Innocence provided “a brief respite by revisiting my childhood recollections of a bygone America ... it became increasingly clear that the world I had known and been shaped by had vanished in 1914.”

4. Jeffrey Eugenides

Eugenides’s 2002 novel, Middlesex, which tells the story of Cal Stephanides, an intersex man assigned female at birth due to a genetic mutation known as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, was described by the Pulitzer jury as “a sweeping, profoundly unique tale of tangled ancestry, the complexities of gender, and the raw, chaotic urges of human longing.” Upon its release, Eugenides explained to The Guardian that his goal was to craft a medically precise depiction of an intersex individual, “not a mythical figure like Tiresias or Orlando, who could transform in a single sentence.”

Eugenides shared that he received numerous letters of gratitude from intersex readers, though the novel also sparked debate. Emi Koyama, director of the Intersex Initiative, commented in 2007 that while “Middlesex is exquisitely crafted,” Eugenides “lacks expertise on intersex matters and did not consult any intersex individuals during the writing process.” The novel’s subject matter often led to Eugenides being asked about intersex issues in interviews—questions Koyama believed “should be addressed to intersex advocates with firsthand knowledge, rather than a novelist with only a superficial understanding.”

5. Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz spent 11 years crafting his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which tells the story of an overweight Dominican boy in New Jersey grappling with a family curse. The lengthy writing process proved worthwhile when Díaz secured the Pulitzer Prize for Oscar Wao in 2008.

6. John Updike

John Updike, the prolific writer of over 25 novels, earned Pulitzers for two installments in his series featuring former athlete Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom: Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990), the latter concluding with Rabbit’s death. Reflecting on ending the series in 1997, Updike remarked, “It felt like a relief. … While some readers may have found it sad, I didn’t feel the same way. Writers are ruthless. We create, and we dismantle.” He added that Rabbit “unlocked something in me. Through him, I could explore perspectives I couldn’t access otherwise.”

7. John Kennedy Toole

After John Kennedy Toole’s tragic death by suicide in 1969, his mother discovered the manuscript for A Confederacy of Dunces. Driven by determination, she approached numerous publishers and eventually persuaded author Walker Percy to read it. Percy later recounted, “She was relentless, and eventually, I found myself in my office, holding the hefty manuscript she insisted I read.” He intended to skim a few pages and dismiss it, but instead, he was captivated: “I kept reading. First with reluctance, then curiosity, then growing enthusiasm, and finally, astonishment—I couldn’t believe it was this exceptional.” The novel was published in 1980, over a decade after Toole’s passing, and earned the Pulitzer Prize the following year.