The 2025 Pulitzer Prize competition for Books is now open. The Pulitzer Prizes for Books are awarded to work in Fiction, U.S. History, Biography, Memoir or Autobiography, Poetry and General Nonfiction. A $15,000 cash award accompanies each Prize.
For the 2025 competition, eligible titles must be first published in the United States during calendar year 2024, and made available in hardcover or bound paperback for purchase by the general public. (Accordingly, titles solely released as ebooks are ineligible.) Beginning this year, authors are eligible to enter their work if they are U.S. citizens, permanent residents of the United States, or if the United States has been their longtime primary home.
All books must be submitted electronically as PDF files. There is a $75 handling fee for each entry.
The recommended entry deadline for eligible books published between January 1, 2024 and July 15, 2024 was Monday, July 15, 2024. As this is a non-binding deadline intended to mitigate crowding of the final deadline, books published in the first half of the year may continue to be submitted after that date. The final deadline for all eligible books published in 2024 (including those slated for publication in the final quarter of the year) is Tuesday, October 15, 2024.
Books first published in calendar year 2023 (including the fourth quarter following the 2024 competition deadline in October 2023) are no longer eligible. Likewise, entrants who plan on first publishing their work between October 15 and December 31, 2024 must submit the most finalized iteration of their work (whether a manuscript copy, galley or complete PDF) by the October 15 deadline in order to be considered.
An important reminder: Entrants (i.e. those whose work is submitted in the competition, whether via self-submission or through the sponsorship of their publisher) are not considered to be “Pulitzer Prize nominees” and should not identify themselves as such in subsequent publications or marketing materials; instead, this designation is reserved for the winner(s) and nominated finalists announced in each category every year. For more information, please see question #20 in our general FAQ.
Interested parties also may wish to review recent works that have received a Pulitzer or the nominated finalist distinction in the Books categories by clicking on the categories in the lower menu here.
Additional entry information, including rules and instructions, may be found on the How to Enter page of Pulitzer.org.
After creating a new account or accessing a preexisting account, the entry form for Books is available at bdmentrysite.pulitzer.org via the “Submit an Entry” button on the top scroll bar. (Attempted physical entries accompanied by the superannuated PDF entry form will not be accepted.) As the scroll bar is not optimized for Android, we recommend completing the entry form on a desktop or laptop if at all feasible.
The Drama and Music entry portals will open for the 2025 competition on July 18 (Drama) and August 5 (Music).