Each year literary foundations, trusts, and other groups award prizes for the best recent books. Winners of some of the most notable prizes are listed below:
BookBrowse Awards
Pulitzer Prize Winners
Booker Prize
The John Newbery Medal
Michael Printz Award
Edgar Awards
National Book Critics Circle Awards
National Book Awards
Costa Book Awards
Nero Book Awards
Women's Prize for Fiction
PEN/Bellwether Prize
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Since 2000, BookBrowse has asked its members and subscribers to select the best books published each year. Through a rigorous voting process, this shortlist is then honed down to find the BookBrowse Awards Winners.
2023 BookBrowse Awards Winners
Joseph Pulitzer, a renowned journalist, established this award in 1917. Since 1984 Pulitzer winners have received their prizes from the president of Columbia University at a luncheon in May in the rotunda of the Low Library in the presence of family members, professional associates, board members, and the faculty of the School of Journalism.
2023 Pulitzer Prize Winners Winners
Awarded in October each year, the Booker Prize is the UK's top literary prize and the most watched single-book award in the English-speaking world. Until 2013 the award was open only to citizens of the Commonwealth of nations (in essence, the UK and former British colonies). As of 2014 the award is open to authors worldwide so long as their work is in English and published in the UK.
2023 Booker Prize Winners
The Newbery Medal is awarded in January each year by the American Library Association for the most distinguished American children's book published the previous year.
2024 The John Newbery Medal Winners
Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature
2024 Michael Printz Award Winners
Mystery Writers of America is the premier organization for mystery writers, professionals allied to the crime writing field, aspiring crime writers, and those who are devoted to the genre. MWA is dedicated to promoting higher regard for crime writing and recognition and respect for those who write within the genre. Each Spring, Mystery Writers of America present the Edgar® Awards, widely acknowledged to be the most prestigious awards in the genre.
2023 Edgar Awards Winners
Each March, the NBCC presents awards for the finest books and reviews published in English in the USA during the previous year. Unlike many awards, the NBCC awards are dated for the previous year (e.g. the winners announced in March 2023 were the 2022 award winners).
2023 National Book Critics Circle Awards Winners
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First awarded in 1950, the National Book Awards recognize the best of American literature. The Awards are announced in November.
2023 National Book Awards Winners
The Costas were one of the UK's most prestigious book awards between 1971 and 2021. Established by Whitbread Plc in 1971, they were known as the Whitbread Awards, until being rebranded as the Costa Awards in 2006 (Costa is a UK based coffee shop chain owned by Whitbread Plc.) The awards were discontinued in early 2022, before announcing the year's winners.
2021 Costa Book Awards Winners
The Nero book awards were launched in May 2023, just under a year after Costa abruptly scrapped its book awards after 50 years. The new prize aims to celebrate the “best reads of the year” by writers based in the UK and Ireland.
2023 Nero Book Awards Winners
One of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, the Women’s Prize for Fiction is awarded each June. It was previously known as the Orange Prize for Fiction (1996 - 2012) and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (2014 - 2017). It celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world. In 2017, the prize announced that it would change its name to simply "Women's Prize for Fiction" and would be supported by multiple sponsors. A sister prize, the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, was launched in 2023 and will first be awarded in 2024.
2022 Women's Prize for Fiction Winners
The PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, formerly known as the Bellwether Prize for Fiction is a biennial award given by PEN America and Barbara Kingsolver to a U.S. citizen for a previously unpublished work of fiction that address issues of social justice. The award is given for a work in progress - hence the award date is often at least a year ahead of publication.
The 2023 winner is Kingdom of No Tomorrow by Fabienne Josaphat; publication date to be announced.
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction honors the best published works of fiction by American permanent residents in a calendar year. Three writers are chosen annually by the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to serve as judges, ensuring that our awards selection process is free of commercial influence. These judges select an initial longlist of ten books, followed by five finalists, and finally one winner as the “first among equals.” The author of the winning book receives a $15,000 prize. The authors of each of the other finalists receive $5,000. The Award is presented at an annual celebration of the year’s distinguished books and authors. This exquisite literary evening features introductions by the PEN/Faulkner Award judges, original presentations by the year’s PEN/Faulkner Award winner and four finalists, and a star-studded list of notable guests, including our PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion.
2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Winners
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The Stone Home
by Crystal Hana Kim
A moving family drama and coming-of-age story revealing a dark corner of South Korean history.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
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