The Index of Major Literary Prizes in the U.S.

Abstract

The Index of Major Literary Prizes in the US includes three related datasets. The first is a dataset of the winners and judges of prizes for prose, poetry, or unspecified genre between 1918 and 2020 with a purse of $10,000 and over. The data was collected by hand mainly from institutional websites. Gender and higher education data for individuals was collected from author biographies, interviews, and other materials. Some information about judges not listed on websites was obtained through correspondence with institutions. The dataset includes details about the winners of fifty-two unique prizes awarded by twenty-two institutions. For a subset of thirty-nine prizes, it includes details about judges; not every prize has complete judge data. It does not include prizes awarded specifically for children’s literature, nonfiction, drama, or translation.