National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters — Complete Winners List

16 years of winners · National Book Foundation · Since 1988 · ← Back to award page

Year	Title	Author	Publisher
2025	Lincoln in the Bardo	George Saunders	Random House
2024	The Poisonwood Bible	Barbara Kingsolver	HarperFlamingo
2023	Thomas and Beulah	Rita Dove	Carnegie-Mellon University Press
2022	Maus	Art Spiegelman	Pantheon Books
2021	Tropic of Orange	Karen Tei Yamashita	Coffee House Press
2020	Devil in a Blue Dress	Walter Mosley	W. W. Norton
2019	A Boy's Own Story	Edmund White	E.P. Dutton
2018	The House of the Spirits	Isabel Allende	Knopf
2017	The Shipping News	Annie Proulx	Scribner
2016	The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York	Robert Caro	Knopf
2015	White Noise	Don DeLillo	Viking
2014	The Left Hand of Darkness	Ursula K. Le Guin	Ace Books
2013	Ragtime	E.L. Doctorow	Random House
2012	Get Shorty	Elmore Leonard	Delacorte Press
2011	Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror	John Ashbery	Viking Press
2010	The Bonfire of the Vanities	Tom Wolfe	Farrar, Straus and Giroux