Award Winning Literature #1

Hint

Answer

This award-winning author created such iconic literary characters as Calvin O’Keefe, Polyhymnia O’Keefe, and Meg Murry. Identify the author of A Swiftly Tilting Planet and A Wrinkle in Time.

This poet examined childhood's fleeting nature in "Fern Hill." He characterized Under Milk Wood as "a play for voices" and reminisced about simpler times in A Child's Christmas in Wales. Who wrote the villanelle "Do not go gentle into that good night"?

Beginning with his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, this author wrote at least one best-seller in each of the decades between the 1940’s and 2000’s. He won a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and the National Book Award for Armies of the Night. Who also received a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel The Executioner’s Song?

He received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature for, quote, “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Born Robert Zimmerman, his songs include such American staples as Mr. Tambourine Man and Blowin’ in the Wind. Name the legendary singer-songwriter of Like A Rolling Stone.

This novel characterizes Route 66 as the so-called "mother road" and "road of flight." Based on a Farm Security Administration worker's field notes, it tracks an impoverished family's journey from Dust Bowl Oklahoma to California. Identify this John Steinbeck classic.

The third of eleven novels in the author’s World’s End series, this work sees Lanny Budd work to free a new family member from Nazi arrest, only to become caught up in the Blood Purge known as Operation Hummingbird. Give the fantastical name of this novel which earned Upton Sinclair a Pulitzer Prize in 1943.

This man's poetry appeared in the 1961 gospel play Black Nativity. The creator of Jesse B. Semple, he wrote "I, Too, Sing America" and "Let America Be America Again." Name the Harlem Renaissance poet of "Dreams" and "Mother to Son."

In an HBO mini-series adaptation of this Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Frances McDormand starred as the titular character. The novel consists of 13 interrelated short stories primarily focused on a cantankerous junior high math teacher and her interactions with family and other residents of Crosby, Maine. Name this novel by Elizabeth Strout.

This discoverer of a namesake paradox in set theory was a founder of analytic philosophy. A campaigner for nuclear disarmament, he titled one of his final works War Crimes in Vietnam. Who was this Nobel laureate and co-author with Alfred North Whitehead of Principia Mathematica?

Regarded as one of the greatest contemporary American writers, his 1985 work Blood Meridian has been referenced by some critics as the Great American Novel. He received a National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Road. Identify this author of No Country for Old Men.

n this National Book Award winning novel, Stingo learns a dark secret from a fellow resident in his Brooklyn boarding house. That resident, the novel’s titular character, was forced to pick which of her children would die first while a prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Give the name of this novel by William Styron, a name now synonymous with any decision with only equally negative outcomes.

He became the first American winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature when he received the award in 1930. Among his best-known novels are It Can’t Happen Here, Babbitt, and Elmer Gantry. Name this author who won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1926 for his novel Arrowsmith.

The author chose to title the four sections of this novel “roots”, “trunk”, “crown”, and “seeds” to mirror the life cycle of a tree. The novel focuses on a group of Americans whose unique experiences with trees bring them together in a shared mission to address forest destruction. Give the name of this Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Richard Powers.

Two of this man's Best Play Tony nominations came for Old Times and The Caretaker. He won the award in 1967 for The Homecoming. Identify this dramatist of The Room, The Dumb Waiter, and The Birthday Party.

Though he earned the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1958, he was forced to decline the award due to pressure from the Community Party of the Soviet Union. Identify the Russian novelist best remembered as the writer of Doctor Zhivago.

Her collections of poetry include the Pulitzer Prize finalist, Four-Legged Girl, and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. Name this poet who won both of those awards in 2022 for her collection titled frank: sonnets.

TIME named his science fiction novel, Never Let Me Go, as the best book of 2005. Nominated for the Booker prize four times, he won the award in 1989 for The Remains of the Day. Identify the Nobel Prize winning author who explored his Japanese identity in such novels as An Artist of the Floating World and A Pale View of Hills.

This novel's subtitle is An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family. It fictionalizes a meeting between literary critic Harold Bloom and a future Israeli prime minister. Name this most recent Pulitzer Prize winner, written by Joshua Cohen.

He described himself as an “old man in his cave of darkness” in his collection of autobiographical essays titled Reluctantly. His collection of poetry, Doctor Jazz, included poems written from 1996 to 2000, and followed a collection written from 1991 to 1995 which earned him the National Book Award in 2006. Name this author of Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey.

The narrator of this novel is nicknamed “Little Onion” and wears a dress throughout much of the novel because he was mistaken as a girl by the famed abolitionist John Brown. Identify the National Book award winner by James McBride which features such historical figures as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman as supporting characters.

The real-life efforts of the author’s grandfather inspired the plot of this Pulitzer Prize winning novel in which Thomas Wazhashk [wah-shushk] and other residents of the Turtle Mountain Reservation band together to resist Indian termination policies of the 1950’s. Name this acclaimed work by Louise Erdich.

His two Pulitzer Prize winning novels both feature the same main character: middle-class everyman Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Name the Pulitzer winners Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest.

The 1982 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry was award to this poet, some two decades after her death. Known for her work in confessional poetry, she is the author of the collections Ariel and The Colossus and Other Poems. Identify this author whose own mental illness likely inspired the semiautobiographical novel, The Bell Jar.

This Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novel was adapted into a Steven Spielberg film starring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg. An epistolary [uh-PIS-tuh-lair-ee] novel, it charts Celie's transformation from abused daughter and wife to self-reliant woman. Name this Alice Walker masterpiece.

Among this novel's characters are Tod Clifton, Rinehart, Brother Jack, and Ras the Exhorter. A National Book Award winner, it follows the title character's move from the racist South to New York City, where he lives in an underground hole. Give the title of this Ralph Ellison novel.

A major setting in this acclaimed coming of age novel is the Citywide Academy for the Performing Arts where Sarah deals a breakup with her Freshmen-year boyfriend David. An older Sarah then works to process an inappropriate relationship with her theater teacher which resulted in an unplanned pregnancy. Give the name of this National Book Award winning novel by Susan Choi.

The title of this Pulitzer Prize winning novel is taken from a 1654 painting by Carel Fabritus. After surviving a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, teenager Theo Decker takes the namesake artwork as a reminder of his dead mother. Name this award-winning coming of age novel by Donna Tartt.

An illegal abortion inspired this author’s first published work, Cleaned Out. She explored the lives and deaths of her parents in A Man’s Place and A Woman’s Story. Name this French author of The Years, the recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature.