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Reading List · The Pulitzer PrizeWomen Who Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for the Novel was first awarded in 1918 and renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948. Edith Wharton became the first woman to win it in 1921, and 33 women have won it since the category began. Their winning books form a long record of American life, from Gilded Age New York and the Depression-era South to Appalachia in the opioid crisis.
With 33 winners to choose from, this list picks 15 that span the decades, from Wharton to Jayne Anne Phillips in 2024, the most recent woman to win. Entries are in chronological order of the win. Each starts with the prize-winning book and, where useful, suggests a second title.
Fifteen Pulitzer-winning women, and where to start with each
Edith Wharton
1862–1937 · New York City, USA
Edith Wharton wrote realistic novels about upper-class New York society and the morals of the Gilded Age, a world she was born into. Her best-known books include The House of Mirth (1905), the novella Ethan Frome (1911) and The Age of Innocence. She died in France in 1937.
She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer for fiction. The judges had chosen Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, but Columbia University’s advisory board overturned them. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times.
Read Wharton if you like sharp, ironic novels about money, class and convention.
Start with The Age of Innocence (1920). In 1870s New York, the lawyer Newland Archer is engaged to the sheltered May Welland when her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, returns from Europe and unsettles everything he has accepted. Or The House of Mirth (1905). Her earlier novel of New York society.
All Edith Wharton books →Pearl S. Buck
1892–1973 · Hillsboro, West Virginia, USA
Pearl S. Buck was taken to China as a baby by her missionary parents and grew up there, bilingual in English and Chinese. Much of her fiction is about rural Chinese life, beginning with East Wind: West Wind (1930). She also wrote biographies of her mother and father and the children’s book The Big Wave.
The Good Earth is the first book of her House of Earth trilogy. Her later novels include Dragon Seed (1942) and Imperial Woman (1956). In 1938 she became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Read Buck if you want a sweeping family story set in pre-revolutionary China.
Start with The Good Earth (1931). Wang Lung, a poor farmer in an early twentieth-century Chinese village, works the land with his wife O-Lan through famine and exile, then grows rich and distant from the values that sustained them.
Harper Lee
1926–2016 · Monroeville, Alabama, USA
For more than fifty years Harper Lee was known for a single novel. To Kill a Mockingbird addresses racism and the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the 1930s Deep South, seen through children’s eyes, and draws on her own family and neighbours in Monroeville.
Go Set a Watchman, an earlier draft set at a later date, appeared in 2015, and a posthumous collection of stories and essays, The Land of Sweet Forever, followed in 2025. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 for her contribution to literature.
Read Lee if you want the classic American novel about race and justice.
Start with To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). Seen through the eyes of two children in a small town in 1930s Alabama, the novel exposes the racism and class prejudice of the adults around them. Or Go Set a Watchman (2015). An earlier draft of Mockingbird, set at a later date and published as a sequel.
All Harper Lee books →Eudora Welty
1909–2001 · Jackson, Mississippi, USA
Eudora Welty spent most of her life in Jackson, Mississippi, and wrote short stories and novels about the American South, beginning with A Curtain of Green (1941). In the 1930s she worked for the Works Progress Administration and photographed rural poverty during the Depression; some of those photographs fed into her stories.
Her novels include Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart and Losing Battles. One Writer’s Beginnings (1984) is a short memoir based on lectures she gave at Harvard. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980 and lived in Jackson until her death at 92.
Read Welty if you like Southern fiction with comedy, precision and close observation.
Start with The Optimist’s Daughter (1972). A judge’s daughter and his second wife confront each other in a hospital room while he undergoes eye surgery. Or A Curtain of Green (1941). Her first collection of short stories.
All Eudora Welty books →Alice Walker
Born 1944 · Eatonton, Georgia, USA
Alice Walker writes novels, essays and poetry about Black women’s lives in the American South and beyond. Meridian (1976) follows activists in the civil rights movement, drawing on her own experience, and her essays in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens introduced the term ‘womanist’.
The Color Purple won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award, making her the first African American woman to win the fiction Pulitzer. Steven Spielberg filmed it in 1985, and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) follows characters, and descendants of characters, from the novel.
Read Walker if you want a direct, emotional novel about survival and sisterhood.
Start with The Color Purple (1982). A young Black woman in the rural South endures abuse from both a racist white world and a patriarchal Black one. Or Meridian (1976). A novel about activists working in the South during the civil rights movement.
All Alice Walker books →Toni Morrison
1931–2019 · Lorain, Ohio, USA
Toni Morrison wrote novels about Black American history and experience, from The Bluest Eye (1970) and Sula (1973) to Song of Solomon (1977) and Jazz (1992). Before writing full-time she was the first Black woman senior editor in Random House’s fiction department.
Beloved won the 1988 Pulitzer, and in 1993 she received the Nobel Prize in Literature. She left Random House in 1983 to concentrate on writing. Her prose is dense and musical and rewards slow reading.
Read Morrison if you are ready for a demanding, powerful novel about slavery’s legacy.
Start with Beloved (1987). Based on the story of Margaret Garner, a woman who escaped slavery, the novel imagines the daughter she killed returning as a ghost to haunt her mother and family. Or The Bluest Eye (1970). Her first novel.
All Toni Morrison books →Anne Tyler
Born 1941 · Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Anne Tyler sets most of her novels in Baltimore, where she lives, and writes about ordinary families: marriages, siblings and the shifting duties between parents and children. Her many novels include Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), A Spool of Blue Thread (2015) and Three Days in June (2025).
Breathing Lessons won the 1989 Pulitzer and was named Time’s book of the year. She lives in the Roland Park neighbourhood of Baltimore, the city most of her fiction returns to. Her novels are warm, gently comic and easy to start.
Read Tyler if you like warm, funny novels about long marriages and family life.
Start with Breathing Lessons (1988). Maggie and Ira Moran, long married, drive from Baltimore to a funeral and back in a single day, their irritations and affection surfacing on the way.
All Anne Tyler books →Annie Proulx
Born 1935 · Norwich, Connecticut, USA
Annie Proulx published her first novel, Postcards, in 1992, in her late fifties. Her fiction is rooted in landscape and work, from Newfoundland to Wyoming, and includes the novels Accordion Crimes (1996) and Barkskins (2016). She wrote The Shipping News as an outsider to Newfoundland, someone ‘from away’.
The Shipping News won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer. Her story ‘Brokeback Mountain’, from Close Range, was filmed in 2005, and her Wyoming stories are a good alternative entry point for readers who prefer short fiction.
Read Proulx if you like harsh landscapes and characters shaped by them.
Start with The Shipping News (1993). After the deaths of his parents and his estranged wife, the reporter Quoyle moves with his two daughters to his family’s ancestral home in Newfoundland and covers the shipping news for a local paper. Or Close Range (1999). Wyoming stories, including ‘Brokeback Mountain’.
All Annie Proulx books →Jhumpa Lahiri
Born 1967 · London, England
Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London, moved to Massachusetts at three and grew up in Rhode Island. Her early books, including The Namesake (2003), Unaccustomed Earth (2008) and The Lowland (2013), are about Indian and Indian American families and the gap between immigrant generations.
Her debut, Interpreter of Maladies, won the 2000 Pulitzer and sold 600,000 copies. After moving to Rome in 2012 she began writing in Italian, including Whereabouts and Roman Stories, both of which have appeared in English.
Read Lahiri if you like quiet, precise stories about migration and family.
Start with Interpreter of Maladies (1999). Short stories about Indians and Indian immigrants: troubled marriages, grief over a stillborn child, and the distance between first- and second-generation immigrants. Or The Namesake (2003). Her first novel.
All Jhumpa Lahiri books →Marilynne Robinson
Born 1943 · Sandpoint, Idaho, USA
Marilynne Robinson published Housekeeping in 1980 and her second novel, Gilead, more than twenty years later. Home, Lila and Jack return to the same Iowa town and to the Ames and Boughton families, with theological questions at their centre. She was born in Sandpoint, Idaho.
Gilead won the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Lila won the NBCC Award again in 2014, and Home won the Orange Prize in 2009. She received the National Humanities Medal in 2012. Her novels are slow and contemplative and reward patient readers.
Read Robinson if you want a slow, reflective novel about faith and family.
Start with Gilead (2004). In 1956, John Ames, an elderly Congregationalist minister in Gilead, Iowa, writes an account of his life and family for his seven-year-old son. Or Housekeeping (1980). Her first novel.
All Marilynne Robinson books →Elizabeth Strout
Born 1956 · Portland, Maine, USA
Elizabeth Strout writes about small-town lives, often in Maine, and returns often to the same characters. After her debut, Amy and Isabelle (1998), she wrote Olive Kitteridge and its sequel Olive, Again, and the Lucy Barton novels beginning with My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016).
Olive Kitteridge won the 2009 Pulitzer and became an Emmy-winning miniseries. My Name Is Lucy Barton was a New York Times bestseller, and Tell Me Everything (2024) brings Lucy and Olive together.
Read Strout if you like linked stories and sharply drawn characters.
Start with Olive Kitteridge (2008). Connected short stories about a woman on the coast of Maine and her family and friends. Or My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016). The first of her novels about the writer Lucy Barton.
All Elizabeth Strout books →Donna Tartt
Born 1963 · Greenwood, Mississippi, USA
Donna Tartt has published three novels, about a decade apart: The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002) and The Goldfinch (2013). Her books are long, carefully plotted and concerned with guilt, beauty and the effect of a single act on a life.
The Goldfinch won the 2014 Pulitzer and was filmed in 2019. She spent eight years writing The Secret History and said in 2023 that she was working on her next novel. Readers who like long novels with a strong narrative pull tend to read all three.
Read Tartt if you want a long, absorbing novel with a strong plot.
Start with The Goldfinch (2013). Thirteen-year-old Theo Decker survives a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother and leaves with Carel Fabritius’s painting The Goldfinch, which shapes his life in New York, Las Vegas and Amsterdam. Or The Secret History (1992). Her first novel.
All Donna Tartt books →Louise Erdrich
Born 1954 · Little Falls, Minnesota, USA
Louise Erdrich, a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, writes novels about Ojibwe families and communities. Her debut, Love Medicine (1984), won the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Round House won the National Book Award, and The Sentence is set in her own Minneapolis bookstore, Birchbark Books.
The Night Watchman, inspired by her maternal grandfather’s life, won the 2021 Pulitzer, and LaRose won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2016. Birchbark Books focuses on Native American literature, and she co-founded the nonprofit Wiigwaas Press with her sister.
Read Erdrich if you are interested in Native American history and family sagas.
Start with The Night Watchman (2020). A novel about a campaign to defeat the ‘termination bill’ introduced by Senator Arthur Vivian Watkins, inspired by the life of Erdrich’s maternal grandfather. Or Love Medicine (1984). Her first novel, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
All Louise Erdrich books →Barbara Kingsolver
Born 1955 · Annapolis, Maryland, USA
Barbara Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland, and grew up in Carlisle, in rural Kentucky, the region her most recent prize-winner returns to. Her novels include The Bean Trees (1988), The Poisonwood Bible (1998) and The Lacuna (2009), which won the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction) in 2010.
Demon Copperhead shared the 2023 Pulitzer with Hernan Diaz’s Trust. It also won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, making her the first author to win that prize twice. The novel moves Dickens’s story to the mountains of southern Appalachia.
Read Kingsolver if you want a big-hearted, angry novel about poverty in America.
Start with Demon Copperhead (2022). A retelling of Dickens’s David Copperfield set in southern Appalachia, examining what the opioid crisis did to the region’s families. Or The Lacuna (2009). The novel that won her the Orange Prize, now the Women’s Prize for Fiction, in 2010.
All Barbara Kingsolver books →Jayne Anne Phillips
Born 1952 · Buckhannon, West Virginia, USA
Jayne Anne Phillips made her name with the story collection Black Tickets (1979) and her first novel, Machine Dreams (1984). Several of her books are set in her native West Virginia; Quiet Dell reconstructs the 1931 murders of a mother and her three children there, and Lark and Termite (2009) was a National Book Award finalist.
Night Watch won the 2024 Pulitzer, making her the most recent woman to win the prize as of 2026. She has also held a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and Machine Dreams was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.
Read Phillips if you like Southern Gothic and historical fiction with a strong sense of place.
Start with Night Watch (2023). In 1874, after the Civil War, twelve-year-old ConaLee and her mother, who has not spoken in over a year, are taken to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. Or Black Tickets (1979). Her first collection of short stories.
Which Pulitzer winner should you read first?
The best starting point depends on what you want from a book.
- For the first woman to win — Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920)
- For an American classic — Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
- For a demanding modern classic — Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
- For linked short stories — Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge (2008)
- For a long, plot-driven novel — Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (2013)
- For a contemporary American story — Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead (2022)
Where to go next
Frequently asked questions
How many women have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?
Thirty-three women have won the prize since the category began in 1918 (as the Prize for the Novel until 1948). This list includes 15 of them.
Who was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?
Edith Wharton, in 1921, for The Age of Innocence. The jury had recommended Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, but the advisory board overruled it.
Who is the most recent woman to win?
Jayne Anne Phillips, for Night Watch in 2024. The 2025 prize went to Percival Everett’s James and the 2026 prize to Daniel Kraus’s Angel Down.
Who was the first African American woman to win the fiction Pulitzer?
Alice Walker, in 1983, for The Color Purple, which also won the National Book Award. Toni Morrison followed in 1988 with Beloved.
Which Pulitzer-winning women also won the Nobel Prize?
Pearl S. Buck (Nobel 1938) and Toni Morrison (Nobel 1993). Buck was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Has the fiction prize ever been shared?
Yes, once: in 2023 Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead shared it with Hernan Diaz’s Trust.
Start with the author whose questions interest you most. The book you remember longest may not be the one with the clearest answers, but the one that changes how you see something familiar.
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