Living Canon

Pulitzer Prizes 2015: Complete list of winners

The 2015 Pulitzer Prizes announced a roster of winners that captured readers’ imaginations across every major category, from meticulously researched histories to luminous fiction. Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See claimed the Fiction prize, bringing readers into the intertwined lives of a blind French girl and a German boy during World War II with prose that felt both delicate and devastating. Meanwhile, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Between Riverside and Crazy won Drama, a darkly comic play set in a rent-controlled Harlem apartment that manages to be both hilarious and profoundly moving about loss, faith, and second chances.

What made the 2015 Pulitzer Prizes particularly fascinating was how the nonfiction winners tackled immense subjects through intimate lenses. Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction examined humanity’s impact on the natural world with alarming clarity, while David I. Kertzer’s The Pope and Mussolini offered a revelatory look at a pivotal moment in European history through the relationship between two towering figures. Elizabeth A. Fenn’s Encounters at the Heart of the World brought lesser-known Indigenous perspectives to the forefront of American historical narrative, and Gregory Pardlo’s Digest brought fresh linguistic vitality to the Poetry category. The year’s selections reflected the Pulitzer Prizes’ enduring commitment to recognizing works that not only display exceptional craft but also expand how we see the world and ourselves.

Here are the complete 2015 Pulitzer Prize winners:

Biography

Drama

Fiction

General Nonfiction

History

Poetry