Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor in 1947
Born	Mary Flannery O'Connor (1925-03-25)March 25, 1925 Savannah, Georgia, US
Died	August 3, 1964(1964-08-03) (aged 39) Milledgeville, Georgia, US
Resting place	Memory Hill Cemetery, Milledgeville, Georgia
Occupation	Novelist short story writer essayist
Period	1946–1964
Genre	Southern Gothic
Subject	Morality Catholicism grace transcendence
Literary movement	Christian realism
Notable works	Wise Blood The Violent Bear It Away A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries.

She was a Southern writer, who often wrote in a sardonic Southern Gothic style, and she relied, heavily, on regional settings and grotesque characters, often in violent situations. In her writing, an unsentimental acceptance or rejection of the limitations, imperfections or differences of these characters (whether attributed to disability, race, crime, religion or sanity) typically underpins the drama.

Her writing often reflects her Catholic faith, and frequently examines questions of morality and ethics. Her posthumously compiled Complete Stories won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and has been the subject of enduring praise.

Early life and education

O'Connor's childhood home in Savannah, Georgia

Childhood

O'Connor was born on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of Edward Francis O'Connor, a real estate agent, and Regina Cline, both of Irish descent. As an adult, she remembered herself as a "pigeon-toed child with a receding chin and a you-leave-me-alone-or-I'll-bite-you complex". The Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home museum is located at 207 E. Charlton Street on Lafayette Square.

In 1940, O'Connor and her family moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, where they initially lived with her mother's family at the so-called 'Cline Mansion,’ in town. In 1937, her father was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, which led to his eventual death on February 1, 1941. O'Connor and her mother continued to live in Milledgeville. In 1951, they moved to Andalusia Farm, which is now a museum dedicated to O'Connor's work.

School

O'Connor attended Peabody High School, where she worked as the school newspaper's art editor and from which she graduated in 1942. She entered Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College & State University) in an accelerated three-year program and graduated in June 1945 with a B.A. in sociology and English literature. While at Georgia College, she produced a significant amount of cartoon work for the student newspaper. Many critics have claimed that the idiosyncratic style and approach of these early cartoons shaped her later fiction, in important ways.

O'Connor with Arthur Koestler (left) and Robie Macauley on a visit to the Amana Colonies in 1947

In 1945, she was accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where she went, at first, to study journalism. While there, she got to know several important writers and critics who lectured or taught in the program, among them Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Robie Macauley, Austin Warren and Andrew Lytle. Lytle, for many years editor of the Sewanee Review, was one of the earliest admirers of her fiction. He later published several of her stories in the Sewanee Review, as well as critical essays on her work. Workshop director Paul Engle was the first to read and comment on the initial drafts of what would become Wise Blood. She received an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, in 1947. She remained at the Iowa Writers' Workshop for another year, after completing her degree on a fellowship. During the summer of 1948, O'Connor continued to work on Wise Blood at Yaddo, an artists' community in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she also completed several short stories.

In 1949 O'Connor met and eventually accepted an invitation to stay with Robert Fitzgerald (a well-known translator of the classics) and his wife, Sally, in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Career

O'Connor is primarily known for her short stories. She published two books of short stories: A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (published posthumously in 1965). Many of O'Connor's short stories have been re-published in major anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories.

O'Connor's two novels are Wise Blood (1952) (made into a film by John Huston) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960). She also has had several books of her other writings published, and her enduring influence is attested by a growing body of scholarly studies of her work.

Fragments exist of an unfinished novel tentatively titled Why Do the Heathen Rage? that draws from several of her short stories, including "Why Do the Heathen Rage?," "The Enduring Chill," and "The Partridge Festival".

Her writing career can be divided into four five-year periods of increasing skill and ambition, 1945 to 1964:

• Postgraduate student: Iowa Writers' Workshop, first published stories, drafts of Wise Blood. Literary influences include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry James.
• Early: Wise Blood completed and published. In this period, satirical elements dominate. Influences include Jacques Maritain.
• Middle: A Good Man Is Hard to Find published, The Violent Bear It Away written and published. Influences include Friedrich von Hügel. In this period, the mystical undercurrents begin to have primacy.
• Mature: Everything That Rises Must Converge written. Influences include Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Mary Anne Long (a childhood victim of facial tumors whose story Flannery edited for the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne). In this period, the notion of grotesque is expanded to include the good as grotesque, and the grotesque as good.

Characteristics

Regarding her emphasis of the grotesque, O'Connor said: "[A]nything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case, it is going to be called realistic." Her fiction is usually set in the South and features morally flawed protagonists who frequently interact with characters with disabilities or are disabled, themselves (as O'Connor was by lupus). The issue of race often appears. Most of her works feature disturbing elements, although she did not like to be characterized as cynical. "I am mighty tired of reading reviews that call A Good Man brutal and sarcastic," she wrote. "The stories are hard, but they are hard, because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism. When I see these stories described as horror stories, I am always amused, because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror."

She felt deeply informed by the sacramental and by the Thomist notion that the created world is charged with God. Yet, she did not write apologetic fiction of the kind prevalent in the Catholic literature of the time, explaining that a writer's meaning must be evident, in his or her fiction, without didacticism. She wrote ironic, subtly allegorical fiction about deceptively backward Southern characters, usually fundamentalist Protestants, who undergo transformations of character that, to her thinking, brought them closer to the Catholic mind. The transformation is often accomplished through pain, violence, and ludicrous behavior in the pursuit of the holy. However grotesque the setting, she tried to portray her characters as open to the touch of divine grace. This ruled out a sentimental understanding of the stories' violence, as of her own illness. She wrote: "Grace changes us, and the change is painful."

She had a deeply sardonic sense of humor, often based on the disparity between her characters' limited perceptions and the extraordinary fate awaiting them. Another frequent source of humor is the attempt of well-meaning liberals to cope with the rural South on their own terms. O'Connor used such characters' inability to come to terms with disability, race, poverty, and fundamentalism, other than in sentimental illusions, to illustrate her view that the secular world was failing in the twentieth century.

In several stories, O'Connor explored a number of contemporary issues from the perspective of both her fundamentalist and liberal characters. She addressed the Holocaust in her story "The Displaced Person", racial integration in "Everything That Rises Must Converge", and intersexuality, in "A Temple of the Holy Ghost". Her fiction often included references to the problem of race in the South. Occasionally, racial issues come to the forefront, as in "The Artificial Nigger", "Everything that Rises Must Converge", and "Judgement Day", her last short story, and a drastically rewritten version of her first published story, "The Geranium".

Despite her secluded life, her writing reveals an uncanny grasp of the nuances of human behavior. O'Connor gave many lectures on faith and literature, traveling quite far, despite her frail health. Politically, she maintained a broadly progressive outlook, in connection with her faith, voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and outwardly supporting the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. Despite this, she made her personal stance on race and integration known, throughout her life, such as in several letters to playwright Maryat Lee, which she wrote under the pseudonym "Mrs Turpin", saying, "You know, I'm an integrationist, by principle, and a segregationist, by taste. I don't like negroes. They all give me a pain, and the more of them I see, the less and less I like them. Particularly the new kind". According to O'Connor biographer, Brad Gooch, there are also "letters where she even talks about a friend that she makes in graduate school at the University of Iowa who is Black, and she defends this friendship to her own mother, in letters. It's complicated to look at, and I don't think that we can box her in."

Illness and death

Andalusia Farm, where O'Connor lived from 1952 until her 1964 death

By the summer of 1952, O'Connor was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus), as her father had been, before her. She remained, for the rest of her life, at Andalusia. O'Connor lived for twelve years, after her diagnosis, which was seven years longer than expected.

Her daily routine was to attend Mass, write in the morning, then, spend the rest of the day recuperating and reading. Despite the debilitating effects of the steroid drugs used to treat O'Connor's lupus, she, nonetheless, made over sixty appearances at lectures to read her works.

In the PBS documentary, Flannery, the writer Alice McDermott explains the impact lupus had on O'Connor's work, saying, "It was the illness, I think, which made her the writer she is."

O'Connor completed more than two dozen short stories and two novels, while living with lupus. She died on August 3, 1964, at the age of 39 in Baldwin County Hospital. Her death was caused by complications from a new attack of lupus, following surgery for a uterine fibroid. She was buried in Milledgeville, Georgia, at Memory Hill Cemetery.

Letters

Throughout her life, O'Connor maintained a wide correspondence with writers that included Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, English professor Samuel Ashley Brown, and playwright Maryat Lee. After her death, a selection of her letters, edited by her friend, Sally Fitzgerald, was published as The Habit of Being. Much of O'Connor's best-known writing on religion, writing, and the South is contained in these and other letters.

In 1955, Betty Hester, an Atlanta file clerk, wrote O'Connor a letter, expressing admiration for her work. Hester's letter drew O'Connor's attention, and they corresponded, frequently. For The Habit of Being, Hester provided Fitzgerald with all the letters she received from O'Connor but requested that her identity be kept private. She was identified, only, as "A." The complete collection of the unedited letters between O'Connor and Hester was unveiled by Emory University, in May 2007. The letters had been given to the university, in 1987, with the stipulation that they not be released to the public for 20 years.

Emory University also contains the more than 600 letters O'Connor wrote to her mother, Regina, nearly every day, while she was pursuing her literary career in Iowa City, New York, and Massachusetts. Some of these describe "travel itineraries and plumbing mishaps, ripped stockings and roommates with loud radios," as well as her request for the homemade mayonnaise of her childhood. O'Connor lived with her mother for 34 of her 39 years of life.

Catholicism

O'Connor was a devout Catholic. From 1956 through 1964, she wrote more than one hundred book reviews for two Catholic diocesan newspapers in Georgia: The Bulletin and The Southern Cross. According to fellow reviewer Joey Zuber, the wide range of books she chose to review demonstrated that she was profoundly intellectual. Her reviews consistently confronted theological and ethical themes in books written by the most serious and demanding theologians of her time. Professor of English Carter Martin, an authority on O'Connor's writings, notes simply that her "book reviews are at one with her religious life".

A prayer journal O'Connor had kept during her time at the University of Iowa was published in 2013. It included prayers and ruminations on faith, writing, and O'Connor's relationship with God.

Interest in birds

O'Connor frequently used bird imagery within her fiction.

When she was six, O'Connor experienced her first brush with celebrity status. Pathé News filmed "Little Mary O'Connor" with O'Connor and her trained chicken and showed the film around the country. She said: "When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathé News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been an anticlimax."

In high school, when the girls were required to sew Sunday dresses for themselves, O'Connor sewed a full outfit of underwear and clothes to fit her pet duck and brought the duck to school to model it.

As an adult at Andalusia, she raised and nurtured some 100 peafowl. Fascinated by birds of all kinds, she raised ducks, ostriches, emus, toucans, and any sort of exotic bird she could obtain, while incorporating peacock imagery in her writing. She described her peacocks in an essay titled "The King of the Birds".

Legacy, awards, and tributes

O'Connor's Complete Stories won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and, in a 2009 online poll, was named the best book ever to have won the National Book Awards.

In June 2015, the United States Postal Service honored O'Connor with a new postage stamp, the 30th issuance in the Literary Arts series. Some criticized the stamp as failing to reflect O'Connor's character and legacy.

She was inducted into the Savannah Women of Vision investiture in 2016.

The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, named in honor of O'Connor by the University of Georgia Press, is a prize given annually since 1983 to an outstanding collection of short stories.

Killdozer published the song "Lupus", based on the disease that took O'Connor's life. Her name is mentioned many times in this song; it can be found on the 1989 album 12 Point Buck.

The Flannery O'Connor Book Trail is a series of Little Free Libraries stretching between O'Connor's homes in Savannah and Milledgeville.

The Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home is a historic house museum in Savannah, Georgia, where O'Connor lived during her childhood. In addition to serving as a museum, the house hosts regular events and programs.

Loyola University Maryland had a student dormitory named for O'Connor. In 2020, Flannery O'Connor Hall was renamed in honor of activist Sister Thea Bowman. The announcement also mentions, "This renaming comes after recent recognition of Flannery O’Connor, a 20th century Catholic American writer, and the racism present in some of her work."

The film, Flannery: The Storied Life of the Writer from Georgia has been described as the story of a writer "who wrestled with the greater mysteries of existence."

In 2023, the biographical film Wildcat was released. Co-written and directed by Ethan Hawke and starring his daughter as Flannery O'Connor, the film features a dramatization of O'Connor trying to publish Wise Blood, interspersed with scenes from her short fiction.

In 2024, O'Connor's unfinished novel Why Do the Heathen Rage? was published by Brazos Press. Jessica Hooten Wilson assembled scenes from O'Connor's drafts and supplied her own critical commentary.

Works

Main article: Flannery O'Connor bibliography

Novels

• Wise Blood (1952)
• The Violent Bear It Away (1960)
• Why Do The Heathen Rage (unfinished; published 2024)

Short story collections

• A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (1955)
• Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965)
• The Complete Stories (1971)

Other works

• Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1969)
• The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor (1979)
• The Presence of Grace: and Other Book Reviews (1983)
• Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works (1988)
• Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons (2012)
• A Prayer Journal (2013)

See also

• Southern United States literature

References

Works cited

• Fitzgerald, Robert (1965). Introduction. Everything That Rises Must Converge. By O'Connor, Flannery. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374504649.
• Giannone, Richard (2012). Flannery O'Connor, Hermit Novelist. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 9781611172270.
• Gooch, Brad (2009). Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor. Little, Brown, and Company. ISBN 9780316040655.
• Martin, Carter W. (1968). The True Country: Themes in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor. Vanderbilt University Press.
• O'Connor, Flannery (1969). Fitzgerald, Sally; Fitzgerald, Robert (eds.). Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374508043.
• O'Connor, Flannery (1979). Fitzgerald, Sally (ed.). The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374521042.
• O'Connor, Flannery; Magee, Rosemary M. (1987). Conversations with Flannery O'Connor. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0878052658.
• O'Connor, Flannery (2008) [1983]. Zuber, Leo; Martin, Carter W. (eds.). The Presence of Grace, and Other Book Reviews. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820331393.

Further reading

General

• Enniss, Steve (May 12, 2007). "Flannery O'Connor's Private Life Revealed in Letters". National Public Radio (Interview). Interviewed by Jacki Lyden. Archived from the original on May 9, 2016. Retrieved May 13, 2016.
• Marshall, Nancy (April 28, 2008). "Andalusia: Photographs of Flannery O'Connor's Farm". Southern Spaces. 2008. doi:10.18737/M7GG60.
• McCulloch, Christine (October 23, 2008). "Glimpsing Andalusia in the O'Connor–Hester Letters". Southern Spaces. 2008. doi:10.18737/M7BS43.
• Wood, Ralph (November 20, 2009). "Flannery O'Connor". Religion & Ethics Newsweekly (Interview). Interviewed by Rafael Pi Roman. PBS.

Biographies

• Bloom, Harold, ed. (2009). Flannery O'Connor. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 9781438128757.
• Cash, Jean W. (2003). Flannery O'Connor: A Life. University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 9781572333055.
• Murray, Lorraine V. (2009). The Abbess of Andalusia: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O'Connor. Saint Benedict Press. ISBN 9781935302162.

Criticism and cultural impact

• Basselin, Timothy J. (2013). Flannery O'Connor: Writing a Theology of Disability Humanity. Baylor University Press. ISBN 9781602583993.
• Bruner, Michael Mears (2017). A Subversive Gospel: Flannery O'Connor and the Reimaging of Beauty, Goodness and Truth. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 9780830850662.
• Westling, Louise (2008). Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820332024.
• Wood, Ralph (2004). Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 9780802829993.

Scholarly guides

• Scott, R. Neil (2002). Flannery O'Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism. Timberlane Books. ISBN 9780971542808.
• Scott, R. Neil; Nye, Valerie (2002). Gordon, Sarah; Streight, Irwin Howard (eds.). Postmarked Milledgeville: A Guide to Flannery O'Connor's Correspondence in Libraries and Archives. Georgia College & State University. ISBN 9780971556706.

External links

• The Flannery O'Connor Repository
• Works by Flannery O'Connor at Faded Page (Canada)
• Flannery O'Connor reads short story A Good Man is Hard to Find (audio)
• Flannery O'Connor introduction to lecture, on Southern Grotesque.
• Flanner O'Connor cartoons

Library resources

• Postmarked Milledgeville, a guide to archival collections of O'Connor's letters
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Flannery O'Connor papers, 1832–2003
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Flannery O'Connor collection, c. 1937–2003
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Letters to Betty Hester, 1955–1964

National Book Award for Fiction
Awarded for	Outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens.
Location	New York City
First awarded	1935
Website	National Book Foundation

The National Book Award for Fiction is one of five annual National Book Awards, which recognize outstanding literary work by United States citizens. Since 1987, the awards have been administered and presented by the National Book Foundation, but they are awards "by writers to writers." The panelists are five "writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field."

General fiction was one of four categories when the awards were re-established in 1950. For several years beginning 1980, prior to the Foundation, there were multiple fiction categories: hardcover, paperback, first novel or first work of fiction; from 1981 to 1983 hardcover and paperback children's fiction; and only in 1980 five awards to mystery fiction, science fiction, and western fiction. When the Foundation celebrated the 60th postwar awards in 2009, all but three of the 77 previous winners in fiction categories were in print. The 77 included all eight 1980 winners but excluded the 1981 to 1983 children's fiction winners.

The award recognizes one book written by a U.S. citizen and published in the U.S. from December 1 to November 30. The National Book Foundation accepts nominations from publishers until June 15, requires mailing nominated books to the panelists by August 1, and announces five finalists in October. The winner is announced on the day of the final ceremony in November. The award is $10,000 and a bronze sculpture; other finalists get $1,000, a medal, and a citation written by the panel.

Authors who have won the award more than once include William Faulkner, John Updike, William Gaddis, Jesmyn Ward, and Philip Roth, each having won on two occasions along with numerous other nominations. Saul Bellow won the award in three decades (1954, 1965, 1971) and is the only author to have won the National Book Award for Fiction three times.

National Book Awards for Fiction

From 1935 to 1941, there were six annual awards for general fiction and the "Bookseller Discovery" or "Most Original Book" was sometimes a novel. From 1980 to 1985, there were six annual awards to first novels or first works of fiction. In 1980 there were five awards to mystery, western, or science fiction. There have been many awards to fiction in the Children's or Young People's categories.

Honorees, general fiction

This list covers only the post-war awards (pre-war awards follow) to general fiction for adult readers: one annual winner from 1950 except two undifferentiated winners 1973 to 1975, dual hardcover and paperback winners 1980 to 1983.

For each award, the winner is listed first followed by the finalists. Unless otherwise noted, the year represents the year the award was given for books published in the prior year. Thus, the award year 1950 is for books published in 1949.

1950s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1950-1959

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1950	Nelson Algren	The Man with the Golden Arm	Winner
	No runners up were recognized. There were five honorable mentions in the non-fiction category only.
1951	William Faulkner	Collected Stories of William Faulkner	Winner
	No runners up were recognized.
1952	James Jones	From Here to Eternity	Winner
	James Agee	The Morning Watch	Finalist
	Truman Capote	The Grass Harp	Finalist
	William Faulkner	Requiem for a Nun	Finalist
	Caroline Gordon	The Strange Children	Finalist
	Thomas Mann	The Holy Sinner	Finalist
	John P. Marquand	Melville Goodwin USA	Finalist
	J. D. Salinger	The Catcher in the Rye	Finalist
	William Styron	Lie Down in Darkness	Finalist
	Jessamyn West	The Witch Diggers	Finalist
	Herman Wouk	The Caine Mutiny	Finalist
1953	Ralph Ellison	Invisible Man	Winner
	Isabel Bolton	Many Mansions	Finalist
	H. L. Davis	Winds of Morning	Finalist
	Thomas Gallagher	The Gathering Darkness	Finalist
	Ernest Hemingway	The Old Man and the Sea	Finalist
	Carl Jonas	Jefferson Selleck	Finalist
	Peter Martin	The Landsman	Finalist
	May Sarton	A Shower of Summer Days	Finalist
	Jean Stafford	The Catherine Wheel	Finalist
	John Steinbeck	East of Eden	Finalist
	William Carlos Williams	The Build-Up	Finalist
1954	Saul Bellow	The Adventures of Augie March	Winner
	No runners up were recognized.
1955	William Faulkner	A Fable	Winner
	Harriette Arnow	The Dollmaker	Finalist
	Hamilton Basso	The View from Pompey's Head	Finalist
	Davis Grubb	The Night of the Hunter	Finalist
	Randall Jarrell	Pictures from an Institution	Finalist
	Milton Lott	The Last Hunt	Finalist
	Frederick Manfred	Lord Grizzly	Finalist
	William March	The Bad Seed	Finalist
	Wright Morris	The Huge Season	Finalist
	Frank Rooney	The Courts of Memory	Finalist
	John Steinbeck	Sweet Thursday	Finalist
1956	John O'Hara	Ten North Frederick	Winner
	Paul Bowles	The Spider's House	Finalist
	Shirley Ann Grau	The Black Prince, and Other Stories	Finalist
	MacKinlay Kantor	Andersonville	Finalist
	Flannery O'Connor	A Good Man is Hard to Find	Finalist
	May Sarton	Faithful Are the Wounds	Finalist
	Robert Penn Warren	Band of Angels	Finalist
	Eudora Welty	The Bride of the Innisfallen	Finalist
	Herman Wouk	Marjorie Morningstar	Finalist
1957	Wright Morris	The Field of Vision	Winner
	Nelson Algren	A Walk on the Wild Side	Finalist
	James Baldwin	Giovanni's Room	Finalist
	Saul Bellow	Seize the Day	Finalist
	B. J. Chute	Greenwillow	Finalist
	A. B. Guthrie	These Thousand Hills	Finalist
	John Hersey	A Single Pebble	Finalist
	John Hunt	Generations of Men	Finalist
	Edwin O'Connor	The Last Hurrah	Finalist
	J. F. Powers	The Presence of Grace	Finalist
	Elizabeth Spencer	The Voice at the Back Door	Finalist
	James Thurber	Further Fables for Our Time	Finalist
1958	John Cheever	The Wapshot Chronicle	Winner
	James Agee	A Death in the Family	Finalist
	James Gould Cozzens	By Love Possessed	Finalist
	Mark Harris	Something About a Soldier	Finalist
	Andrew Nelson Lytle	The Velvet Horn	Finalist
	Bernard Malamud	The Assistant	Finalist
	Wright Morris	Love Among the Cannibals	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	Pnin	Finalist
	Ayn Rand	Atlas Shrugged	Finalist
	Nancy Wilson Ross	The Return of Lady Brace	Finalist
	May Sarton	The Birth of a Grandfather	Finalist
1959	Bernard Malamud	The Magic Barrel	Winner
	J. P. Donleavy	The Ginger Man	Finalist
	William Humphrey	Home from the Hill	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	Lolita	Finalist
	John O'Hara	From the Terrace	Finalist
	J. R. Salamanca	The Lost Country	Finalist
	Anya Seton	The Winthrop Woman	Finalist
	Robert Traver	Anatomy of a Murder	Finalist

1960s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1960-1969

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1960	Philip Roth	Goodbye, Columbus	Winner
	Louis Auchincloss	Pursuit of the Prodigal	Finalist
	Hamilton Basso	The Light Infantry Ball	Finalist
	Saul Bellow	Henderson the Rain King	Finalist
	Evan S. Connell, Jr.	Mrs. Bridge	Finalist
	William Faulkner	The Mansion	Finalist
	Mark Harris	Wake Up, Stupid	Finalist
	John Hersey	The War Lover	Finalist
	H. L. Humes	Men Die	Finalist
	Shirley Jackson	The Haunting of Hill House	Finalist
	Elizabeth Janeway	The Third Choice	Finalist
	James Jones	The Pistol	Finalist
	Warren Miller	The Cool World	Finalist
	James Purdy	Malcolm	Finalist
	Leo Rosten	The Return of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N	Finalist
	John Updike	The Poorhouse Fair	Finalist
	Robert Penn Warren	The Cave	Finalist
	Morris West	The Devil's Advocate	Finalist
1961	Conrad Richter	The Waters of Kronos	Winner
	Louis Auchincloss	The House of Five Talents	Finalist
	Kay Boyle	Generation Without Farewell	Finalist
	John Hersey	The Child Buyer	Finalist
	John Knowles	A Separate Peace	Finalist
	Harper Lee	To Kill a Mockingbird	Finalist
	Wright Morris	Ceremony in Lone Tree	Finalist
	Flannery O'Connor	The Violent Bear It Away	Finalist
	Elizabeth Spencer	The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales	Finalist
	Francis Steegmuller	The Christening Party	Finalist
	John Updike	Rabbit, Run	Finalist
	Mildred Walker	The Body of a Young Man	Finalist
1962	Walker Percy	The Moviegoer	Winner
	Hortense Calisher	False Entry	Finalist
	George P. Elliott	Among the Dangs	Finalist
	Joseph Heller	Catch-22	Finalist
	Bernard Malamud	A New Life	Finalist
	William Maxwell	The Chateau	Finalist
	J. D. Salinger	Franny and Zooey	Finalist
	Isaac Bashevis Singer	The Spinoza of Market Street and Other Stories	Finalist
	Edward Lewis Wallant	The Pawnbroker	Finalist
	Joan Williams	The Morning and the Evening	Finalist
	Richard Yates	Revolutionary Road	Finalist
1963	J. F. Powers	Morte d'Urban	Winner
	Vladimir Nabokov	Pale Fire	Finalist
	Katherine Anne Porter	Ship of Fools	Finalist
	Dawn Powell	The Golden Spur	Finalist
	Clancy Sigal	Going Away	Finalist
	John Updike	Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories	Finalist
1964	John Updike	The Centaur	Winner
	Bernard Malamud	Idiots First	Finalist
	Mary McCarthy	The Group	Finalist
	Thomas Pynchon	V.	Finalist
	Harvey Swados	The Will	Finalist
1965	Saul Bellow	Herzog	Winner
	Louis Auchincloss	The Rector of Justin	Finalist
	John Hawkes	Second Skin	Finalist
	Richard E. Kim	The Martyred	Finalist
	Wallace Markfield	To an Early Grave	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	The Defense	Finalist
	Isaac Bashevis Singer	Short Friday	Finalist
1966	Katherine Anne Porter	The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter	Winner
	Jesse Hill Ford	The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones	Finalist
	Peter Matthiessen	At Play in the Fields of the Lord	Finalist
	James Merrill	The (Diblos) Notebook	Finalist
	Flannery O'Connor	Everything That Rises Must Converge	Finalist
	Harry Mark Petrakis	Pericles on 31st Street	Finalist
1967	Bernard Malamud	The Fixer	Winner
	Louis Auchincloss	The Embezzler	Finalist
	Edwin O'Connor	All in the Family	Finalist
	Walker Percy	The Last Gentleman	Finalist
	Harry Mark Petrakis	A Dream of Kings	Finalist
	Wilfrid Sheed	Office Politics	Finalist
1968	Thornton Wilder	The Eighth Day	Winner
	Norman Mailer	Why Are We in Vietnam?	Finalist
	Joyce Carol Oates	A Garden of Earthly Delights	Finalist
	Chaim Potok	The Chosen	Finalist
	William Styron	The Confessions of Nat Turner	Finalist
1969	Jerzy Kosiński	Steps	Winner
	John Barth	Lost in the Funhouse	Finalist
	Frederick Exley	A Fan's Notes	Finalist
	Joyce Carol Oates	Expensive People	Finalist
	Thomas Rogers	The Pursuit of Happiness	Finalist

1970s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1970-1979

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1970	Joyce Carol Oates	them	Winner
	Leonard Gardner	Fat City	Finalist
	Leonard Michaels	Going Places	Finalist
	Jean Stafford	The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford	Finalist
	Kurt Vonnegut	Slaughterhouse-Five	Finalist
1971	Saul Bellow	Mr. Sammler's Planet	Winner
	James Dickey	Deliverance	Finalist
	Shirley Hazzard	The Bay of Noon	Finalist
	John Updike	Bech: A Book	Finalist
	Eudora Welty	Losing Battles	Finalist
1972	Flannery O'Connor	The Complete Stories	Winner
	Frederick Buechner	Lion Country	Finalist
	E. L. Doctorow	The Book of Daniel	Finalist
	Stanley Elkin	The Dick Gibson Show	Finalist
	Tom McHale	Farragan's Retreat	Finalist
	Joyce Carol Oates	Wonderland	Finalist
	Cynthia Ozick	The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories	Finalist
	Walker Percy	Love in the Ruins	Finalist
	Earl Thompson	A Garden of Sand	Finalist
	John Updike	Rabbit Redux	Finalist
1973	John Barth	Chimera	Winner
	John Williams	Augustus
	Brock Brower	The Late Great Creature	Finalist
	Alan H. Friedman	Hermaphrodeity	Finalist
	Barry Hannah	Geronimo Rex	Finalist
	George V. Higgins	The Friends of Eddie Coyle	Finalist
	R. M. Koster	The Prince	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	Transparent Things	Finalist
	Ishmael Reed	Mumbo Jumbo	Finalist
	Thomas Rogers	The Confessions of a Child of the Century	Finalist
	Isaac Bashevis Singer	Enemies, A Love Story	Finalist
	Eudora Welty	The Optimist's Daughter	Finalist
1974	Doris Betts	Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories	Winner
	Thomas Pynchon	Gravity's Rainbow
	John Cheever	The World of Apples	Finalist
	Ellen Douglas	Apostles of Light	Finalist
	Stanley Elkin	Searches and Seizures	Finalist
	John Gardner	Nickel Mountain	Finalist
	John Leonard	Black Conceit	Finalist
	Thomas McGuane	Ninety-Two in the Shade	Finalist
	Wilfrid Sheed	People Will Always Be Kind	Finalist
	Isaac Bashevis Singer	A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories	Finalist
	Gore Vidal	Burr	Finalist
	Joy Williams	State of Grace	Finalist
1975	Donald Barthelme	Guilty Pleasures	Winner
	Robert Stone	Dog Soldiers
	Gail Godwin	The Odd Woman	Finalist
	Joseph Heller	Something Happened	Finalist
	Toni Morrison	Sula	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	Look at the Harlequins!	Finalist
	Grace Paley	Enormous Changes at the Last Minute	Finalist
	Philip Roth	My Life As a Man	Finalist
	Mark Smith	The Death of the Detective	Finalist
	Thomas Williams	The Hair of Harold Roux	Finalist
1976	William Gaddis	J R	Winner
	Saul Bellow	Humboldt's Gift	Finalist
	Hortense Calisher	The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher	Finalist
	Johanna Kaplan	Other People's Lives	Finalist
	Vladimir Nabokov	Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories	Finalist
	Larry Woiwode	Beyond the Bedroom Wall	Finalist
1977	Wallace Stegner	The Spectator Bird	Winner
	Raymond Carver	Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?	Finalist
	MacDonald Harris	The Balloonist	Finalist
	Ursula K. Le Guin	Orsinian Tales	Finalist
	Cynthia Propper Seton	A Fine Romance	Finalist
1978	Mary Lee Settle	Blood Tie	Winner
	Robert Coover	The Public Burning	Finalist
	Peter De Vries	Madder Music	Finalist
	James Alan McPherson	Elbow Room	Finalist
	John Sayles	Union Dues	Finalist
1979	Tim O'Brien	Going After Cacciato	Winner
	John Cheever	The Stories of John Cheever	Finalist
	John Irving	The World According to Garp	Finalist
	Diane Johnson	Lying Low	Finalist
	David Plante	The Family	Finalist

1980s

For 1980 to 1983 this list covers the paired "Fiction (hardcover)" and "Fiction (paperback)" awards in that order. Hard and paper editions were distinguished only in these four years; none of the paperback winners were original; in their first editions all had been losing finalists in 1979 or 1981.

From 1980 to 1985 there was also one award for first novel or first work of fiction and in 1980 there were five more awards for mystery, western, and science fiction. None of those are covered here.

1980-1983

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1980-1983

Year	Category	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1980	Hardcover	William Styron	Sophie's Choice	Winner
		James Baldwin	Just Above My Head	Finalist
		Norman Mailer	The Executioner's Song	Finalist
		Philip Roth	The Ghost Writer	Finalist
		Scott Spencer	Endless Love	Finalist
	Paperback	John Irving	The World According to Garp	Winner
		Paul Bowles	Collected Stories	Finalist
		Gail Godwin	Violet Clay	Finalist
		John Updike	Too Far to Go	Finalist
		Marguerite Young	Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, Volumes 1 and 2	Finalist
1981	Hardcover	Wright Morris	Plains Song: For Female Voices	Winner
		Shirley Hazzard	The Transit of Venus	Finalist
		William Maxwell	So Long, See You Tomorrow	Finalist
		Walker Percy	The Second Coming	Finalist
		Eudora Welty	The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty	Finalist
	Paperback	John Cheever	The Stories of John Cheever	Winner
		Thomas Flanagan	The Year of the French	Finalist
		Norman Mailer	The Executioner's Song	Finalist
		Scott Spencer	Endless Love	Finalist
		Herman Wouk	War and Remembrance	Finalist
1982	Hardcover	John Updike	Rabbit is Rich	Winner
		Mark Helprin	Ellis Island and Other Stories	Finalist
		John Irving	The Hotel New Hampshire	Finalist
		Robert Stone	A Flag for Sunrise	Finalist
		William Wharton	Dad	Finalist
	Paperback	William Maxwell	So Long, See You Tomorrow	Winner
		E. L. Doctorow	Loon Lake	Finalist
		Shirley Hazzard	The Transit of Venus	Finalist
		Walker Percy	The Second Coming	Finalist
		Anne Tyler	Morgan's Passing	Finalist
1983	Hardcover	Alice Walker	The Color Purple	Winner
		Gail Godwin	A Mother and Two Daughters	Finalist
		Bobbie Ann Mason	Shiloh and Other Stories	Finalist
		Paul Theroux	The Mosquito Coast	Finalist
		Anne Tyler	Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant	Finalist
	Paperback	Eudora Welty	The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty	Winner
		David Bradley	The Chaneysville Incident	Finalist
		Mary Gordon	The Company of Women	Finalist
		Marilynne Robinson	Housekeeping	Finalist
		Robert Stone	A Flag for Sunrise	Finalist

1983 entries were published during 1982; winners in 27 categories were announced April 13 and privately celebrated April 28, 1983.

1984 entries for the "revamped" awards in three categories were published November 1983 to October 1984; eleven finalists were announced October 17. Winners were announced and celebrated November 15, 1984.

1984-1989

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1984-1989

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1984	Ellen Gilchrist	Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories	Winner
	Alison Lurie	Foreign Affairs	Finalist
	Philip Roth	The Anatomy Lesson	Finalist
1985	Don DeLillo	White Noise	Winner
	Ursula K. Le Guin	Always Coming Home	Finalist
	Hugh Nissenson	The Tree of Life	Finalist
1986	E. L. Doctorow	World's Fair	Winner
	Norman Rush	Whites	Finalist
	Peter Taylor	A Summons to Memphis	Finalist
1987	Larry Heinemann	Paco's Story	Winner
	Alice McDermott	That Night	Finalist
	Toni Morrison	Beloved	Finalist
	Howard Norman	The Northern Lights	Finalist
	Philip Roth	The Counterlife	Finalist
1988	Pete Dexter	Paris Trout	Winner
	Don DeLillo	Libra	Finalist
	Mary McGarry Morris	Vanished	Finalist
	J. F. Powers	Wheat That Springeth Green	Finalist
	Anne Tyler	Breathing Lessons	Finalist
1989	John Casey	Spartina	Winner
	E. L. Doctorow	Billy Bathgate	Finalist
	Katherine Dunn	Geek Love	Finalist
	Oscar Hijuelos	The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love	Finalist
	Amy Tan	The Joy Luck Club	Finalist

1990s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 1990-1999

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1990	Charles Johnson	Middle Passage	Winner
	Felipe Alfau	Chromos	Finalist
	Elena Castedo	Paradise	Finalist
	Jessica Hagedorn	Dogeaters	Finalist
	Joyce Carol Oates	Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart	Finalist
1991	Norman Rush	Mating	Winner
	Louis Begley	Wartime Lies	Finalist
	Stephen Dixon	Frog	Finalist
	Stanley Elkin	The MacGuffin	Finalist
	Sandra Scofield	Beyond Deserving	Finalist
1992	Cormac McCarthy	All the Pretty Horses	Winner
	Dorothy Allison	Bastard Out of Carolina	Finalist
	Cristina García	Dreaming in Cuban	Finalist
	Edward P. Jones	Lost in the City	Finalist
	Robert Stone	Outerbridge Reach	Finalist
1993	E. Annie Proulx	The Shipping News	Winner
	Amy Bloom	Come to Me: Stories	Finalist
	Thom Jones	The Pugilist at Rest	Finalist
	Richard Powers	Operation Wandering Soul	Finalist
	Bob Shacochis	Swimming in the Volcano	Finalist
1994	William Gaddis	A Frolic of His Own	Winner
	Ellen Currie	Moses Supposes	Finalist
	Richard Dooling	White Man's Grave	Finalist
	Howard Norman	The Bird Artist	Finalist
	Grace Paley	The Collected Stories	Finalist
1995	Philip Roth	Sabbath's Theater	Winner
	Madison Smartt Bell	All Souls' Rising	Finalist
	Edwidge Danticat	Krik? Krak!	Finalist
	Stephen Dixon	Interstate	Finalist
	Rosario Ferré	The House on the Lagoon	Finalist
1996	Andrea Barrett	Ship Fever and Other Stories	Winner
	Ron Hansen	Atticus	Finalist
	Elizabeth McCracken	The Giant's House	Finalist
	Steven Millhauser	Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer	Finalist
	Janet Peery	The River Beyond the World	Finalist
1997	Charles Frazier	Cold Mountain	Winner
	Don DeLillo	Underworld	Finalist
	Diane Johnson	Le Divorce	Finalist
	Ward Just	Echo House	Finalist
	Cynthia Ozick	The Puttermesser Papers	Finalist
1998	Alice McDermott	Charming Billy	Winner
	Allegra Goodman	Kaaterskill Falls	Finalist
	Gayl Jones	The Healing	Finalist
	Robert Stone	Damascus Gate	Finalist
	Tom Wolfe	A Man in Full	Finalist
1999	Ha Jin	Waiting	Winner
	Andre Dubus III	House of Sand and Fog	Finalist
	Kent Haruf	Plainsong	Finalist
	Patricia Henley	Hummingbird House	Finalist
	Jean Thompson	Who Do You Love	Finalist

2000s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 2000-2009

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
2000	Susan Sontag	In America	Winner
	Charles Baxter	The Feast of Love	Finalist
	Alan Lightman	The Diagnosis	Finalist
	Joyce Carol Oates	Blonde	Finalist
	Francine Prose	Blue Angel	Finalist
2001	Jonathan Franzen	The Corrections	Winner
	Dan Chaon	Among the Missing	Finalist
	Jennifer Egan	Look at Me	Finalist
	Louise Erdrich	The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse	Finalist
	Susan Straight	Highwire Moon	Finalist
2002	Julia Glass	Three Junes	Winner
	Mark Costello	Big If	Finalist
	Adam Haslett	You Are Not a Stranger Here	Finalist
	Martha McPhee	Gorgeous Lies	Finalist
	Brad Watson	The Heaven of Mercury	Finalist
2003	Shirley Hazzard	The Great Fire	Winner
	T. C. Boyle	Drop City	Finalist
	Edward P. Jones	The Known World	Finalist
	Scott Spencer	A Ship Made of Paper	Finalist
	Marianne Wiggins	Evidence of Things Unseen	Finalist
2004	Lily Tuck	The News from Paraguay	Winner
	Sarah Shun-lien Bynum	Madeleine is Sleeping	Finalist
	Christine Schutt	Florida	Finalist
	Joan Silber	Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories	Finalist
	Kate Walbert	Our Kind	Finalist
2005	William T. Vollmann	Europe Central	Winner
	E.L. Doctorow	The March	Finalist
	Mary Gaitskill	Veronica	Finalist
	Christopher Sorrentino	Trance	Finalist
	Rene Steinke	Holy Skirts	Finalist
2006	Richard Powers	The Echo Maker	Winner
	Mark Z. Danielewski	Only Revolutions	Finalist
	Ken Kalfus	A Disorder Peculiar to the Country	Finalist
	Dana Spiotta	Eat the Document	Finalist
	Jess Walter	The Zero	Finalist
2007	Denis Johnson	Tree of Smoke	Winner
	Mischa Berlinski	Fieldwork	Finalist
	Lydia Davis	Varieties of Disturbance	Finalist
	Joshua Ferris	Then We Came to the End	Finalist
	Jim Shepard	Like You'd Understand, Anyway	Finalist
2008	Peter Matthiessen	Shadow Country	Winner
	Aleksandar Hemon	The Lazarus Project	Finalist
	Rachel Kushner	Telex from Cuba	Finalist
	Marilynne Robinson	Home	Finalist
	Salvatore Scibona	The End	Finalist
2009	Colum McCann	Let the Great World Spin	Winner
	Bonnie Jo Campbell	American Salvage	Finalist
	Daniyal Mueenuddin	In Other Rooms, Other Wonders	Finalist
	Jayne Anne Phillips	Lark and Termite	Finalist
	Marcel Theroux	Far North	Finalist

2020s

National Book Award for Fiction winners and finalists, 2020–present

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
2020	Charles Yu	Interior Chinatown	Winner
	Rumaan Alam	Leave the World Behind	Finalist
	Lydia Millet	A Children's Bible	Finalist
	Deesha Philyaw	The Secret Lives of Church Ladies	Finalist
	Douglas Stuart	Shuggie Bain	Finalist
2021	Jason Mott	Hell of a Book	Winner
	Anthony Doerr	Cloud Cuckoo Land	Finalist
	Lauren Groff	Matrix	Finalist
	Laird Hunt	Zorrie	Finalist
	Robert Jones Jr.	The Prophets	Finalist
2022	Tess Gunty	The Rabbit Hutch	Winner
	Gayl Jones	The Birdcatcher	Finalist
	Jamil Jan Kochai	The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories	Finalist
	Sarah Thankam Mathews	All This Could Be Different	Finalist
	Alejandro Varela	The Town of Babylon	Finalist
2023	Justin Torres	Blackouts	Winner
	Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah	Chain-Gang All-Stars	Finalist
	Aaliyah Bilal	Temple Folk	Finalist
	Paul Harding	This Other Eden	Finalist
	Hanna Pylväinen	The End of Drum-Time	Finalist
2024	Pemi Aguda	Ghostroots	Finalist
	Kaveh Akbar	Martyr!	Finalist
	Percival Everett	James	Finalist
	Miranda July	All Fours	Finalist
	Hisham Matar	My Friends	Finalist

Early awards for fiction

The National Book Awards for 1935 to 1940 annually recognized the "Most Distinguished Novel" (1935–1936) or "Favorite Fiction" (1937–1940). Furthermore, works of fiction were eligible for the "Bookseller Discovery" and "Most Original Book" awards; fiction winners are listed here.

There was only one National Book Award for 1941, the Bookseller Discovery, which recognized the novel Hold Autumn In Your Hand by George Perry; then none until the 1950 revival in three categories including Fiction.

Most Distinguished Novel (1935–1936)

1935: Rachel Field, Time Out of Mind

1936: Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

Favorite Fiction (1937–1940)

1937: A. J. Cronin, The Citadel

• Conrad Richter, The Sea of Grass
• Kenneth Roberts, Northwest Passage
• Leonard Q. Ross (Leo Rosten), The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N (short stories)

1938: Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

1939: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

• Sholom Asch, The Nazarene

1940: Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

Bookseller Discovery (1936–1941)

1936: Norah Lofts, I Met a Gypsy (short stories)

1937: Lawrence Watkin, On Borrowed Time (novel)

• see 1937 Fiction

1938: see nonfiction

1939: Elgin Groseclose, Ararat (novel)

• Chard Powers Smith, Artillery of Time, I

1940: see nonfiction

1941: George Sessions Perry, Hold Autumn in Your Hand (novel)

Most Original Book (1935–1939)

1935: Charles G. Finney, The Circus of Dr. Lao (novel)

1936: see nonfiction

1937: see nonfiction

• see 1937 Fiction

1938: see nonfiction

1939: Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun (novel)

• Geoffrey Household, Rogue Male

Repeat winners

See Winners of multiple U.S. National Book Awards

External links

• The Contenders: 61 Years of National Book Award Fiction Finalists, special exhibit, June 2012. "Down Memory Lane With the National Book Awards (and Not Just the Winners), The New York Times, June 22, 2012.