Heartland Prize

The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize is a literary prize created in 1988 by the newspaper The Chicago Tribune. It is awarded yearly in two categories: Fiction and Nonfiction. These prizes are awarded to books that "reinforce and perpetuate the values of heartland America."

Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize — Fiction

• 2019: Rebecca Makkai for The Great Believers
• 2018: George Saunders, for Lincoln in the Bardo
• 2017: Colson Whitehead, for The Underground Railroad
• 2016: Jane Smiley, for Golden Age
• 2015: Chang-rae Lee, for On Such a Full Sea
• 2014: Daniel Woodrell, for The Maid's Version
• 2013: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for Americanah
• 2012: Richard Ford, for Canada
• 2011: Jonathan Franzen, for Freedom
• 2010: E. O. Wilson, for Anthill
• 2009: Jayne Anne Phillips, for Lark and Termite
• 2008: Aleksandar Hemon, for The Lazarus Project
• 2007: Robert Olmstead, for Coal Black Horse
• 2006: Louise Erdrich, for The Painted Drum
• 2005: Marilynne Robinson, for Gilead
• 2004: Ward Just, for An Unfinished Season
• 2003: Scott Turow, for Reversible Errors
• 2002: Alice Sebold, for The Lovely Bones
• 2001: Mona Simpson, for Off Keck Road
• 2000: Jeffery Renard Allen, for Rails Under My Back
• 1999: Elizabeth Strout, for Amy and Isabelle
• 1998: Jane Hamilton, for The Short History of a Prince
• 1997: Charles Frazier, for Cold Mountain
• 1996: Antonya Nelson, for Talking in Bed
• 1995: William Maxwell, for All The Days and Nights
• 1994: Maxine Clair, for Rattlebone
• 1993: Annie Proulx, for The Shipping News
• 1992: Jane Smiley, for A Thousand Acres
• 1991: Kaye Gibbons, for A Cure For Dreams
• 1990: Tim O'Brien, for The Things They Carried
• 1989: Ward Just, for Jack Gance
• 1988: Eric Larsen, for An American Memory

Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize — Nonfiction

• 2019: Sarah Smarsh, for Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
• 2018: Caroline Fraser, for Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
• 2017: Matthew Desmond, for Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
• 2016: Margo Jefferson, for Negroland: A Memoir
• 2015: Danielle Allen, for Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality
• 2014: Jesmyn Ward, for Men We Reaped
• 2013: Thomas Dyja, for The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream
• 2012: Paul Hendrickson, for Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961
• 2011: Isabel Wilkerson, for The Warmth of Other Suns
• 2010: Rebecca Skloot for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
• 2009: Nick Reding, for Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town
• 2008: Garry Wills, for Head and Heart: American Christianities and What the Gospels Meant
• 2007: Orville Vernon Burton, for The Age of Lincoln
• 2006: Taylor Branch, for At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968
• 2005: Kevin Boyle, for Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
• 2004: Ann Patchett, for Truth & Beauty: A Friendship
• 2003: Paul Hendrickson, for Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy
• 2002: Studs Terkel, for Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith
• 2001: Louis Menand, for The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
• 2000: Zachary Karabell, for The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election
• 1999: Jay Parini for Robert Frost: A Life
• 1998: Alex Kotlowitz, for The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, A Death, and America's Dilemma
• 1997: Thomas Lynch, for The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade
• 1996: Jonathan Harr, for A Civil Action
• 1995: Richard Stern, for A Sistermony
• 1994: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for Colored People: A Memoir
• 1993: Norman Maclean, for Young Men and Fire
• 1992: Melissa Fay Greene, for Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Non-Fiction
• 1991: William Cronon, for Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
• 1990: Michael Dorris, for The Broken Cord: A Family's Ongoing Struggle with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
• 1989: Joseph Epstein, for Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives
• 1988: Don Katz, for The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears

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