Famous Pulitzer Prize Winners a to z

Director, producer and playwright George Abbott lived to be 107 and participated in such Broadway productions as Boy Meets Girl, The Fall Guy and Our Town.

James Agee was a film critic for TIME magazine, penned the screenplay for The African Queen, and won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for his novel A Death in the Family.

Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Edward Albee is best known for penning Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Zoo Story.

W.H. Auden was a literary chameleon known for his poetry but who also wrote librettos, essays and verse dramas.

Russell Baker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and columnist who authored the autobiographies Growing Up and The Good Times.

A popular humorist, Dave Barry has poked fun at an array of topics, from bad songs to historical events, for more than 30 years.

American fantasy and horror author Ray Bradbury is best known for his novels Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles.

Self-described ‘street reporter’ Jimmy Breslin wrote columns for a sequence of New York papers. Also a novelist, he won a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Gwendolyn Brooks was a postwar poet best known as the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her 1949 book Annie Allen.

Art Buchwald is known for writing humor columns for Paris newspaper The Herald Tribune, and for winning a Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary in 1982.

Prolific author Pearl S. Buck earned a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Good Earth. She was also the first female to win a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Willa Cather was a writer of poetry and novels known for such works as O Pioneers! and My Antonia.

U.S. short-story writer and novelist John Cheever’s story collections include The Stories of John Cheever, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1978.

African American poet Rita Dove is the youngest person and the first African American to be appointed Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress.

Roger Ebert is an American film critic best known as one half of the popular Siskel and Ebert film critic television show.

American feminist and journalist Susan Faludi wrote Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which argues that the media distort news about women.

A four-time Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry, American Robert Frost depicted realistic New England life through language and situations familiar to the common man.

Louise Glück is a poet whose work has been described as technically precise, sensitive, insightful and gripping.

American cartoonist Rube Goldberg was best known for his work satirizing America's obsession with technology. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his editorial cartoon "Peace Today."

Doris Kearns Goodwin is best known for authoring biographies of American presidents, including Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Alex Haley was an American writer whose works of historical fiction and reportage depicted the struggles of African Americans.

Marvin Hamlisch composed more than 40 motion picture scores throughout his career, including 1973's "The Way We Were" and 1975's "A Chorus Line." He is also known for his musical adaptation for 1973's The Sting, and work on such films as Sophie's Choice and Ordinary People.

Lyricist and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II collaborated with Richard Rodgers on the Pulitzer Prize–winning musicals Oklahoma! and South Pacific.

William Inge was a playwright best known for his plays Come Back, Little Sheba; Picnic, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize; and Bus Stop.

American playwright George S. Kaufman co-wrote a number of Broadway hits, two of which received Pulitzer Prizes.

Harper Lee is best known for writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)—her one and only published novel.

Aviator Charles Lindbergh became famous for making the first solo transatlantic airplane flight in 1927.

Author Norman Mailer used a style combining fiction and journalism to write the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Executioner's Song.

Bernard Malamud was an American writer known for his novels and short stories of the Jewish-American life in the first half of the 20th century.

David Mamet is a playwright and screenwriter known for such heady works as American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross.

A giant in the music world, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis is a multi-Grammy Award winner who has been lauded for his work both in jazz and classical music.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Frank McCourt wrote the biography Angela’s Ashes after retiring from teaching for 30 years in New York City.

Writer Larry McMurtry is noted for his novels set on the frontier, in contemporary small towns, and in increasingly urbanized and industrial areas of Texas.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay was such a bright young thing of the jazz age that she coined the term "my candle burns at both ends."

Arthur Miller was an American playwright whose bitting criticism of societal problems defined his genius. His best known play is Death of a Salesman.

Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved.

Twice appointed the United States' poet laureate, Howard Nemerov was a writer with wit and illuminating irony.

Sylvia Plath was a gifted, troubled poet, known for the confessional style of her work. She wrote the novel The Bell Jar.

Anna Quindlen is the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and bestselling novelist who wrote the books One True Thing and Object Lessons.

From The Sound of Music to Oklahoma! to South Pacific, Richard Rodgers helped change the face of Broadway musicals, giving them stories and making them both memorable and "hum-able."

Poet and professor Theodore Roethke was best known for winning the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for his poetry volume The Wakening. His other works include "Open House" and "The Far Field."

American novelist and short-story writer Philip Roth is best known for his provocative explorations of Jewish and American identity.

William Safire was a writer whose column "On Language" was a long-running feature of The New York Times Magazine.

Poet Anne Sexton wrote the collections To Bedlam and Part Way Back, as well as Live or Die, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. She committed suicide in 1974.

Sam Shepard is a prolific, Oscar-nominated actor and playwright who’s won the Pulitzer Prize.

Writer for stage and screen Neil Simon penned some of America's most popular plays, including Barefoot in the Park (1963) and The Odd Couple (1965).

John Steinbeck was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist whose book The Grapes of Wrath portrayed the plight of migrant workers during the Depression.

Novelist William Styron won a Pulitzer Prize for The Confessions of Nat Turner and wrote Sophie’s Choice, the basis of an Academy Award-winning film.

Studs Terkel was a Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian who compiled books of interviews with everyday people.

Barbara Tuchman, American historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is best known for writing The Guns of August and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45.

Anne Tyler is an American novelist best known for writing The Accidental Tourist (1985) which was made into a movie in 1988 starring William Hurt and Geena Davis.

Writer John Updike's works are known for their subtle depiction of American middle-class life. His popular Rabbit series earned him two Pulitzer prizes.

Mona Jane Van Duyn was a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and academic.

Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, African-American novelist and poet most famous for authoring The Color Purple.

Wendy Wasserstein was an award-winning playwright of such works as The Sisters Rosensweig and An American Daughter.

Thornton Wilder is a multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright known for works like The Bridge of San Luis Rey, The Ides of March and Our Town.

Hank Williams became one of America's first country music superstars, with hits like "Your Cheatin' Heart," before his early death at 29.

Tennessee Williams was an American writer, whose signature works include A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Glass Menagerie.

Playwright August Wilson won two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990).