Every year, various organizations form committees to choose books based on certain criteria that they feel add something special to the literary world. Each award/organization looks for something different in selecting these works.
Our August 2021 Library display is Award Winning books. Please feel free to peruse the display and check out as many of the books as you would like. We have created this blog post to explain the awards these books have won.
The Pulitzer Prize
There are 21 categories for the Pulitzer Prize, but for the sake of this post, we are focused on Fiction books.
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is awarded for a distinguished work of fiction published that year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. The book is given the notable award and the author receives $15,000.
2020
A spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption.
2021
A spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption.
2019
An ingeniously structured narrative that branches and canopies like the trees at the core of the story whose wonder and connectivity echo those of the humans living amongst them.
The Booker Award
The leading literary award in the English speaking world, which has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over 50 years. Awarded annually to the best novel of the year written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.
2020
Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings.
2019
The sequel to Margaret Atwood’s 1986 work of speculative fiction, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments follows the journey of three pivotal characters in Gilead.
2019
Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women that paints a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and looks back to the legacy of Britain’s colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.
Women's Prize Book Award
The Women’s Prize for Fiction is the UK’s most prestigious annual book award celebrating & honoring fiction written by women.
2020
A story about the death of William Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, to plague.
2019
A gripping story of a fierce love and what it means to be a Black man in America.
2011
A thoughtful story about Civil War in the Balkans and a young woman who remembers stories her grandfather told her.
Other Award Winning Books
These books have won various awards from the Pulitzer, Booker or Women’s Book Award in earlier years to the National Book Award to the ALA Book Awards for Fiction.
Finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, and the LA Times Book Prize; and it was one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2018.
Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award; Audie Literary Award for Literary Fiction & Classics; and The American Book Award 2017.
Audie Audiobook of the Year award 2015 and Goodreads Choice Awards Best Mystery and Thriller 2015
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1988; American Book Award 1988; Ansifiel-Wolf Book Award 1988
Finalist, National Book Award 2020 Fiction
Goodreads Choice Awards Best Historical Fiction 2016
Audie Award for Multi-Voiced Performance in a Book 2016
National Book Critic’s Choice for Fiction 2020