1981

• The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
  1981 · Hugo Awards · Best Novel
• The Cloak and the Staff by Gordon R. Dickson
  1981 · Hugo Awards · Best Novelette
• Lost Dorsai by Gordon R. Dickson
  1981 · Hugo Awards · Best Novella
• Grotto of the Dancing Deer by Clifford D. Simak
  1981 · Hugo Awards · Best Short Story
• The Morning of the Poem by James Schuyler
  1981 · Pulitzer Prize · Poetry
• Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie
  1981 · Pulitzer Prize · Biography
• Fin-De Siecle Vienna: Politics And Culture by Carl E. Schorske
  1981 · Pulitzer Prize · General Nonfiction
• Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley
  1981 · Pulitzer Prize · Drama
• American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 by Lawrence A. Cremin
  1981 · Pulitzer Prize · History
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
  1981 · Pulitzer Prize · Fiction
• The Saturn Game by Poul Anderson
  1981 · Nebula Awards · Best Novella
• The Quickening by Michael Bishop
  1981 · Nebula Awards · Best Novelette
• The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe
  1981 · Nebula Awards · Best Novel
• The Bone Flute* by Lisa Tuttle
  1981 · Nebula Awards · Best Short Story