National Book Award 1957: Complete list of winners

The 1957 National Book Award demonstrated the award’s commitment to recognizing literary sophistication across genres, with winners who exemplified a distinctly American modernism tempered by formal elegance. Wright Morris’s The Field of Vision claimed the fiction prize, a novel that showcased Morris’s innovative approach to narrative structure and his keen eye for the landscapes—both literal and psychological—that shape American identity. Meanwhile, Richard Wilbur’s Things of This World captured the poetry award, a collection that cemented Wilbur’s reputation as one of the era’s most skilled formal poets, capable of finding profound philosophical weight in meticulously crafted verses about everyday objects and experiences.

This was a vintage year for the National Book Award, one that reflected the literary establishment’s appreciation for writers who balanced technical mastery with genuine emotional and intellectual substance. The 1950s were a complex period for American letters, caught between the experimental legacies of modernism and the emerging challenges to traditional forms, and the 1957 selections showed that the award’s judges valued writers who could navigate both currents with confidence. Both Morris and Wilbur represented a distinctly post-war sensibility—intellectually rigorous, formally disciplined, yet deeply engaged with the textures and contradictions of contemporary American life.

Below you’ll find the complete list of 1957 National Book Award honorees and finalists:

Fiction

• The Field of Vision by Wright Morris

Poetry

• Things of This World † by Richard Wilbur