Which Writers Have Won the Most Major Prizes?
A Ranking by the Most Absurd Metric
In the literary world, it seems like it’s always prize season. But who actually gets all these literary prizes? It feels as though some writers have won every prize in the world—and it also feels as though some, while equally deserving, have won almost none of them. These are the kinds of thoughts that lead me to make spreadsheets, and also to share my findings with you.
I couldn’t track every single prize available to writers (or at least, I couldn’t without going insane), so I stuck to the biggest and most prestigious prizes in fiction.* While putting together the data, I noticed that some writers had won several of the same prize, and some had a more diverse portfolio, so I’ve split the final results into two lists: those who have one the most prizes of those I counted, full stop, and those who have won the most distinct prizes, i.e. one of each. I also looked at who had won the most prizes for a single book. I included prizes for career work as well as for single books.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given what we know about sexism in publishing, it’s mostly men who top all the lists here. Interestingly, the women who do rank are more likely to be writers of speculative fiction (Ursula K. Le Guin, N. K. Jemisin, etc.)—possibly because winners of the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards are more likely to win them multiple times than the winners of more general literary awards. On the plus side, if you haven’t read Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, this accounting may just finally convince you.
*
The writers who have won the most major prizes:
9 prizes:
Philip Roth
National Book Award for Goodbye, Columbus (1960)
NBCC Award for The Counterlife (1987)
PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock (1994)
National Book Award for Sabbath’s Theater (1995)
Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral (1998)
PEN/Faulkner Award for The Human Stain (2001)
American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (2001)
PEN/Faulkner Award for Everyman (2007)
Man Booker International Prize (2011)
8 prizes:
John Updike
National Book Award for The Centaur (1964)
NBCC Award for Rabbit is Rich (1981)
Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit is Rich (1982)
National Book Award for Rabbit is Rich (1982)
NBCC Award for Rabbit at Rest (1990)
Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit at Rest (1991)
PEN/Faulkner Award for The Early Stories 1953-1975 (2004)
American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (2007)
7 prizes:
E. L. Doctorow
NBCC Award for Ragtime (1975)
National Book Award for World’s Fair (1986)
NBCC Award for Billy Bathgate (1989)
PEN/Faulkner Award for Billy Bathgate (1990)
NBCC Award for The March (2005)
PEN/Faulkner Award for The March (2006)
American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (2013)
+
Colson Whitehead
Whiting Award (2000)
Dos Passos Prize (2012)
National Book Award for The Underground Railroad (2016)
Pulitzer Prize for The Underground Railroad (2017)
Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence for The Underground Railroad (2017)
Arthur C. Clarke Award for The Underground Railroad (2017)
MacArthur Genius Grant (2002)
6 prizes:
Saul Bellow
National Book Award for The Adventures of Augie March (1954)
National Book Award for Herzog (1965)
National Book Award for Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1971)
Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt’s Gift (1976)
Nobel Prize (1976)
American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (1977)
+
Lois McMaster Bujold
Nebula Award for Best Novel for Falling Free (1989)
Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Vor Game (1991)
Hugo Award for Best Novel for Barrayar (1992)
Hugo Award for Best Novel for Mirror Dance (1995)
Hugo Award for Best Novel for Paladin of Souls (2004)
Nebula Award for Best Novel for Paladin of Souls (2004)
+
William Faulkner
Nobel Prize (1949)
National Book Award for Collected Stories (1951)
Pulitzer Prize for A Fable (1955)
National Book Award for A Fable (1955)
American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (1962)
Pulitzer Prize for The Reivers (1963)
+
Ursula K. Le Guin
Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Left Hand of Darkness (1970)
Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Left Hand of Darkness (1970)
Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Dispossessed (1975)
Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Dispossessed (1975)
Nebula Award for Best Novel for Tehanu: the Last Book of Earthsea (1991)
Nebula Award for Best Novel for Powers (2009)
+
Marilynne Robinson
PEN/Hemingway Award for Housekeeping (1982)
NBCC Award for Gilead (2004)
Pulitzer Prize for Gilead (2005)
LA Times Book Prize for Home (2008)
Women’s Prize for Fiction for Home (2009)
NBCC Award for Lila (2014)
5 prizes:
Jim Crace
Ben Fountain
Joe Haldeman
Edward P. Jones
Connie Willis
4 prizes:
Orson Scott Card
John Cheever
Arthur C. Clarke
Junot Díaz
Jennifer Egan
Louise Erdrich
Robert A. Heinlein
N. K. Jemisin
Ha Jin
Bernard Malamud
Hilary Mantel
Cormac McCarthy
Ian McEwan
China Miéville
Viet Thanh Nguyen
E. Annie Proulx
Kim Stanley Robinson
John Edgar Wideman
*
The writers who have won the most distinct prizes:
7:
Colson Whitehead
(Pulitzer, National Book Award, Whiting Award, MacArthur Genius Grant, Dos Passos Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Arthur C. Clarke Award)
6:
Philip Roth
(National Book Award, NBCC Award, PEN/Faulkner, Pulitzer Prize, American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal, Man Booker International Prize)
5:
John Updike
(National Book Award, NBCC Award, Pulitzer Prize, PEN/Faulkner, American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal)
4:
E. L. Doctorow
(National Book Award, NBCC Award, PEN/Faulkner, American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal)
*
The most prizes for a single book:
4:
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
(Pulitzer, National Book Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Andrew Carnegie Medal)
3:
John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
(Pulitzer, National Book Award, NBCC Award)
Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
(Pulitzer, NBCC Award, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize)
Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad
(Pulitzer, NBCC Award, LA Times Book Prize)
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
(NBCC Award, LA Times Book Prize, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize)
Edward P. Jones, The Known World
(Pulitzer, NBCC Award, International Dublin Literary Award)
Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice
(Arthur C. Clarke Award, Nebula Award, Hugo Award)
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer
(Pulitzer, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal)
John Updike, Rabbit is Rich
(Pulitzer, National Book Award, NBCC Award)
*For the record, I counted the following awards and prizes, in fiction writing only (again, for sanity): the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Booker Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Costa First Novel Prize, the Costa Novel Prize, the Dos Passos Prize, the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the IMPAC (now the International Dublin Literary Award), the Kirkus Prize, the LA Times Book Prize, the MacArthur Genius Grant, the Man Booker International Prize, the National Book Award, the NBCC Award, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Nobel Prize, the PEN/Faulkner, the PEN/Hemingway, the Pulitzer, the Whiting Award, the Windham-Campbell, the Women’s Prize.
