Living Canon

Pulitzer Prizes 1985: Complete list of winners

The 1985 Pulitzer Prizes delivered a remarkably diverse lineup of winners that reflected the breadth of American letters at mid-decade. Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park With George captured the Drama prize, cementing the Pulitzer’s appreciation for innovative musical theater at a moment when Sondheim was pushing the boundaries of what Broadway storytelling could achieve. Meanwhile, Alison Lurie took Fiction for Foreign Affairs, a witty exploration of academic life and romantic entanglement that showcased the prize’s continued support for sophisticated literary fiction. The year’s Biography winner, Kenneth Silverman’s The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, represented the kind of meticulously researched, substantial biographical work that has long been a Pulitzer staple, diving deep into early American religious history through the lens of one of its most polarizing figures.

What made 1985 particularly striking was how the Pulitzer committee balanced literary ambition with cultural accessibility. Studs Terkel’s The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two won General Nonfiction with its innovative approach to historical documentation—assembling firsthand accounts rather than imposing a single authorial voice—while Thomas K. McCraw’s Prophets of Regulation showed the prize’s investment in rigorous historical scholarship about American institutions. Poet Carolyn Kizer rounded out the year with Yin, adding an important voice to the American poetry canon at a time when the Pulitzer was beginning to showcase greater diversity in its selections.

Here’s the complete breakdown of all the 1985 Pulitzer Prize winners:

Biography

Drama

Fiction

General Nonfiction

History

Poetry

  • Yin by Carolyn Kizer