50 free Pulitzer Prize trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Pulitzer Prize trivia quiz covers America's best-known awards for journalism, books, drama and music, along with the extraordinary immigrant publisher who endowed them. The easy questions handle the basics: which university runs the prizes, how many are given, what the winners receive, and who Joseph Pulitzer's great rival was. From there it moves through how the juries and board actually work, which categories were added or renamed, and the fine print that separates a real 'nominee' from a mere entrant. The harder half is for literature and media buffs: the juries that were overruled to deny Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway, Albee and Pynchon; the ghostwriting scandal behind Profiles in Courage; Janet Cooke's fabricated story; the four double winners for Fiction; and Pulitzer's own life from mule hostler and Civil War cavalryman to the crowdfunding of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal. If you enjoyed our journalism or American literature quizzes, this is the deep dive on one prize. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the prize, the Fiction category and Joseph Pulitzer before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many Pulitzer Prizes are awarded each year?
23
Fifteen are for journalism and eight for books, drama and music.
Q 02Which university administers the Pulitzer Prizes?
Columbia
Joseph Pulitzer's bequest also founded and endowed the university's School of Journalism.
Q 03In which year were the first Pulitzer Prizes awarded?
1917
They were established under Pulitzer's will after his death in 1911 and are now announced each May.
Q 04Joseph Pulitzer was born in which country?
Hungary
He was born in Makó, about 200 kilometres south-east of Budapest, in 1847.
Q 05Since the 2017 awards, how much money accompanies each Pulitzer certificate?
$15,000
The one exception is Public Service, whose winning news organisation receives a gold medal instead.
Q 06Which Pulitzer category is a gold medal rather than cash, awarded only to a news organisation?
Public Service
It is often thought of as the grand prize and listed first among the journalism awards.
Q 07How many finalists are named in each Pulitzer category?
Three
Juries nominate the finalists; the board then picks the winner or may decline to give an award at all.
Q 08Since what year have nominated finalists been publicly announced?
1980
The Pulitzer Board discourages mere entrants from calling themselves 'nominees'.
Q 09What majority does the Pulitzer Board need to bypass the jury's nominations and pick a different entry?
75 percent
The board can also vote to give no award at all in a category.
Q 10Which newspaper's owner called the Pulitzers a 'mutual admiration society' and refused to compete until 1961?
Chicago Tribune
Colonel Robert R. McCormick controlled the paper and dismissed the prize as not to be taken seriously.
Q 11How much did Pulitzer's will allocate to the prize and scholarships?
$250,000
He specified four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one in education, and four travelling scholarships.
Q 12Magazines were finally allowed to enter all journalism categories in which year?
2016
Their earlier exclusion led to the creation of the National Magazine Awards in 1966.
Q 13Which category, added in 2020, gave its first prize to an episode of This American Life?
Audio Reporting
'The Out Crowd' won; the second year's prize went to the NPR podcast No Compromise.
Q 21Which Thomas Pynchon novel did the 1974 fiction jury unanimously recommend, only for the board to give no award?
Gravity's Rainbow
The three-member jury's choice was overturned by the advisory board and the trustees.
Q 22Which Washington Post writer returned her 1981 Pulitzer after her story of a child heroin addict was found fabricated?
Janet Cooke
'Jimmy's World' was withdrawn after the newspaper's own investigation.
Q 23Which author of The African settled a Roots plagiarism suit with Alex Haley for $650,000?
Harold Courlander
A second suit by Margaret Walker over her novel Jubilee was dismissed.
Q 14From 1918 to 1947, the award now called the Fiction prize went under what name?
the Novel
The rename in 1948 let a short-story collection, Michener's Tales of the South Pacific, win for the first time.
Q 15How many members sit on the Pulitzer Prize Board?
Nineteen
It meets twice a year in the Joseph Pulitzer World Room at Columbia's Pulitzer Hall.
Q 16Who was the first woman and first person of colour to serve as Pulitzer Prize administrator?
Dana Canedy
She held the post from 2017 to 2020 before becoming publisher at Simon & Schuster.
Q 17In 1921 the Pulitzer trustees gave the fiction prize to The Age of Innocence over which novel?
Main Street
Sinclair Lewis, the snubbed author, later became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Q 18Which Hemingway novel was recommended for the 1941 prize but blocked by the university president over sexual content?
For Whom the Bell Tolls
No award was given that year; Hemingway finally won in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea.
Q 19Which future president won the 1957 Biography Prize for a book believed ghostwritten by his speechwriter?
John F. Kennedy
Ted Sorensen later admitted in his memoir that he wrote 'a first draft of most of the chapters' of Profiles in Courage.
Q 20Which Edward Albee play was picked by the 1963 Pulitzer drama jury but denied the prize over its profanity?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Albee later won three Pulitzers for Drama, but never for his most famous play.
Q 24Which Tony-winning musical won the 2010 Drama prize despite not being among the jury's nominees?
Next to Normal
The board is allowed to bypass jury nominations with a 75 percent vote.
Q 25Nikole Hannah-Jones won the 2020 Commentary prize for which New York Times series?
The 1619 Project
Conservative scholars later called for its revocation after the Times softened a claim about the American Revolution.
Q 26Which four authors have each won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice?
Tarkington, Faulkner, Updike, Whitehead
Colson Whitehead is the most recent, winning for The Underground Railroad in 2017 and The Nickel Boys in 2020.
Q 27Which 1928 Pulitzer winner set in Peru forced the board to loosen its insistence on 'American life'?
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder's novel was recommended unanimously despite having nothing to do with 'American manners and manhood'.
Q 28Which two novelists share the record of four Pulitzer fiction nominations each?
Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth
Roth won once, for American Pastoral; Oates has never won.
Q 29The fiction prize was shared by two authors for the first time in which year?
2023
Since 1918, the prize has gone unawarded in eleven separate years.
Q 30Which word from Pulitzer's will did the board restore in 1927, replacing 'wholesome'?
Whole
The original wording demanded novels present 'the highest standard of American manners and manhood'.