Pulitzer Prizes 1960s: A decade of winners

The 1960s were a turning point for American letters, and the Pulitzer Prizes captured that shift perfectly. As the nation grappled with civil rights, war, and social upheaval, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction delivered some of its most enduring classics—Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in 1961 arrived as a cultural touchstone, while William Faulkner’s The Reivers and Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer proved that American fiction was wrestling with timeless moral questions even as the world burned around it. By decade’s end, N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn signaled something new: indigenous voices finally breaking through the traditional literary establishment, a recognition that would reshape American letters for generations to come.

Beyond fiction, the Pulitzer Prizes reflected a restless energy across all categories. Barbara W. Tuchman’s The Guns of August and Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night showed that narrative nonfiction was claiming unprecedented cultural authority—these weren’t dusty historical tomes but urgent, literary investigations of power and conflict. The drama winners ranged from the jazzy political satire of Fiorello! to Edward Albee’s increasingly experimental A Delicate Balance, while poets like Anne Sexton and John Berryman brought raw psychological intensity and formal innovation to American verse. This was the Pulitzer Prize era when the awards seemed genuinely relevant to the moment, recognizing not just technical excellence but moral seriousness and artistic daring.

What follows is a complete accounting of the decade’s winners—a literary snapshot of America wrestling with itself.

1960

Biography

• John Paul Jones by Samuel Eliot Morison

Drama

• Fiorello! by Jerome Weidman, George Abbott, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick

Fiction

• Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

History

• In the Days of McKinley by Margaret Leech

Poetry

• Heart’s Needle by W. D. Snodgrass

1961

Biography

• Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War by David Donald

Drama

• All The Way Home by Tad Mosel

Fiction

• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

History

• Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference by Herbert Feis

Poetry

• Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades by Phyllis McGinley

1962

Drama

• How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying by Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows

Fiction

• The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor

General Nonfiction

• The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H. White

History

• The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West 1763-1766 by Lawrence H. Gipson

Poetry

• Poems by Alan Dugan

1963

Biography

• Henry James by Leon Edel

Fiction

• The Reivers by William Faulkner

General Nonfiction

• The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman

History

• Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878 by Constance McLaughlin Green

Poetry

• Pictures from Brueghel by William Carlos Williams

1964

Biography

• John Keats by Walter Jackson Bate

Fiction

• No award given by No award given

General Nonfiction

• Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

History

• Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town by Sumner Chilton Powell

Poetry

• At The End Of The Open Road by Louis Simpson

1965

Biography

• Henry Adams, three volumes by Ernest Samuels

Drama

• The Subject Was Roses by Frank D. Gilroy

Fiction

• The Keepers Of The House by Shirley Ann Grau

General Nonfiction

• O Strange New World by Howard Mumford Jones

History

• The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865-1879 by Irwin Unger

Poetry

• 77 Dream Songs by John Berryman

1966

Biography

• A Thousand Days by Arthur M. Schlesinger

Fiction

• Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter

General Nonfiction

• Wandering Through Winter by Edwin Way Teale

History

• The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War by Perry Miller

Poetry

• Selected Poems by Richard Eberhart

1967

Biography

• Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain by Justin Kaplan

Drama

• A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee

Fiction

• The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

General Nonfiction

• The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture by David Brion Davis

History

• Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West by William H. Goetzmann

Poetry

• Live or Die by Anne Sexton

1968

Biography

• Memoirs by George F. Kennan

Fiction

• The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

General Nonfiction

• The Story of Civilization: Rousseau and Revolution by Will and Ariel Durant

History

• The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn

Poetry

• The Hard Hours by Anthony Hecht

1969

Biography

• The Man From New York: John Quinn and His Friends by Benjamin Lawrence Reid

Drama

• The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler

Fiction

• House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

General Nonfiction

• The Armies Of The Night by Norman Mailer
• So Human An Animal by Rene Jules Dubos

History

• Origins of the Fifth Amendment by Leonard W. Levy

Poetry

• Of Being Numerous by George Oppen