National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters — Complete Winners List

38 years of winners · National Book Foundation · Since 1988 · ← Back to award page

Year	Title	Author	Publisher
2025	Lincoln in the Bardo	George Saunders	Random House
2024	The Poisonwood Bible	Barbara Kingsolver	HarperFlamingo
2023	Thomas and Beulah	Rita Dove	Carnegie-Mellon University Press
2022	Maus	Art Spiegelman	Pantheon Books
2021	Tropic of Orange	Karen Tei Yamashita	Coffee House Press
2020	Devil in a Blue Dress	Walter Mosley	W. W. Norton
2019	A Boy's Own Story	Edmund White	E.P. Dutton
2018	The House of the Spirits	Isabel Allende	Knopf
2017	The Shipping News	Annie Proulx	Scribner
2016	The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York	Robert Caro	Knopf
2015	White Noise	Don DeLillo	Viking
2014	The Left Hand of Darkness	Ursula K. Le Guin	Ace Books
2013	Ragtime	E.L. Doctorow	Random House
2012	Get Shorty	Elmore Leonard	Delacorte Press
2011	Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror	John Ashbery	Viking Press
2010	The Bonfire of the Vanities	Tom Wolfe	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
2009	Lincoln	Gore Vidal	—
2008	The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts	Maxine Hong Kingston	—
2007	Slouching Towards Bethlehem	Joan Didion	—
2006	Diving into the Wreck	Adrienne Rich	—
2005	The Naked and the Dead	Norman Mailer	—
2004	Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret	Judy Blume	—
2003	The Shining	Stephen King	—
2002	American Pastoral	Philip Roth	—
2001	Death of a Salesman	Arthur Miller	—
2000	Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury	—
1999	What I Know for Sure	Oprah Winfrey	—
1998	Rabbit, Run	John Updike	—
1997	The Good War	Studs Terkel	—
1996	Beloved	Toni Morrison	—
1995	John Adams	David McCullough	—
1994	Annie Allen	Gwendolyn Brooks	—
1993	Lifetime Reading Plan	Clifton Fadiman	—
1992	Some Natural Things	James Laughlin	—
1991	The Optimist's Daughter	Eudora Welty	—
1990	The Adventures of Augie March	Saul Bellow	—
1989	The Discoverers	Daniel Boorstin	—
1988	Book Business: Publishing Past, Present and Future	Jason Epstein	—