The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded since 1948 for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It replaced the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel.

• 1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
• 1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens
• 1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
• 1951: The Town by Conrad Richter
• 1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
• 1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• 1954: no award given
• 1955: A Fable by William Faulkner
• 1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
• 1957: no award given
• 1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee
• 1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor
• 1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
• 1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• 1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor
• 1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner
• 1964: no award given
• 1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
• 1966: Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter
• 1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
• 1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
• 1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
• 1970: Collected Stories by Jean Stafford
• 1971: no award given
• 1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
• 1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
• 1974: no award given ¹
• 1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
• 1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
• 1977: no award given
• 1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson
• 1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
• 1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
• 1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• 1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
• 1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• 1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy
• 1985: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
• 1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
• 1987: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
• 1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison
• 1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
• 1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
• 1991: Rabbit At Rest by John Updike
• 1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
• 1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
• 1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
• 1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
• 1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford
• 1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
• 1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth
• 1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham
• 2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• 2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
• 2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo
• 2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• 2004: The Known World (ISBN 0060557540) by Edward P. Jones
• 2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

¹ The fiction jury voted unanimously to grant the 1974 award to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, but the rest of the Pulitzer panel overturned this decision.