All 1981 Book Awards

Click through each award to see the full list of nominees and winners!

British Fantasy Awards – August Derleth Award – Horror Novel

To Wake the Dead

Ramsey Campbell

British SF Association – Novel

Timescape

Gregory Benford

Costa Book Award – Novel

Silver’s City

Maurice Leitch

Governor General’s Literary Award – Drama

Blood Relations

Sharon Pollock

Governor General’s Literary Award – Fiction

Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories

Mavis Gallant

Governor General’s Literary Award – Non-fiction

Caribou and the Barren-Lands

George Calef

Governor General’s Literary Award – Poetry

The Collected Poems of F.R. Scott

F.R. Scott

Hugo Awards – Novel

The Snow Queen

Joan D. Vinge

James Tait Black Memorial Prize – Biography

Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions

Victoria Glendinning

James Tait Black Memorial Prize – Fiction

Midnight’s Children

Salman Rushdie

John W. Campbell – Novel

Timescape

Gregory Benford

Locus – Fantasy Novel

Lord Valentine’s Castle

Robert Silverberg

Locus – SF Novel

The Snow Queen

Joan D. Vinge

Los Angeles Times Book Prize – Biography

Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life…Theodore Roosevelt

David McCullough

Los Angeles Times Book Prize – Current Interest

Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number

Jacobo Timerman, Toby Talbot

Los Angeles Times Book Prize – Fiction

The White Hotel

D.M. Thomas

Los Angeles Times Book Prize – History

Land of Savagery, Land of Promise: The European Image of the American Frontier

Ray Allen Billington

Los Angeles Times Book Prize – Poetry

Three Pieces

Ntozake Shange

National Book Critics Circle Award – Criticism

A Virgil Thomson Reader

Virgil Thomson

National Book Critics Circle Award – Fiction

Rabbit is Rich

John Updike

National Book Critics Circle Award – General Nonfiction

The Mismeasure of Man

Stephen Jay Gould

National Book Critics Circle Award – Poetry

A Coast of Trees

A.R. Ammons

Nebula – Novel

Timescape

Gregory Benford

Pulitzer Prize – Biography or Autobiography

Peter the Great: His Life and World

Robert K. Massie

Pulitzer Prize – Fiction

A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole

Pulitzer Prize – General Nonfiction

Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture

Carl E. Schorske

Pulitzer Prize – History

American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876

Lawrence A. Cremin

Pulitzer Prize – Poetry

The Morning of the Poem

James Schuyler

World Fantasy Awards – Novel

The Shadow of the Torturer

Gene Wolfe

Beehive – Fiction

Eddie’s Menagerie

Carolyn Haywood, illustrated by Ingrid Fetz

Bluebonnet – Children’s

Ramona and Her Father

Beverly Cleary

Boston Globe – Fiction & Poetry

The Leaving

Lynn Hall

Boston Globe – Picture Book

Outside Over There

Maurice Sendak

Caldecott – Picture Book

Fables

Arnold Lobel

Carnegie Medal – Children’s

The Scarecrows

Robert Westall

Coretta Scott King – Author

This Life

Sidney Poitier

Coretta Scott King – Illustrator

Beat the Story Drum, Pum-Pum

Ashley Bryan

Costa – Children’s

The Hollow Land

Jane Gardam

Costa – First Novel

A Good Man in Africa

William Boyd

Edgar Allan Poe – First Novel

The Watcher

Kay Nolte Smith

Edgar Allan Poe – Juvenile

The Seance

Joan Lowery Nixon

Edgar Allan Poe – Novel

Whip Hand

Dick Francis

Edgar Allan Poe – Paperback Original

Public Murders

Bill Granger

Greenaway Medal – Illustrator

The Highwayman

Charles Keeping

Hemingway – PEN

Household Words

Joan Silber

L.A. Times – Fiction

The White Hotel

D.M. Thomas

Newbery Medal – Children’s

Jacob Have I Loved

Katherine Paterson

PEN/Faulkner – Fiction

The Chaneysville Incident

David Bradley

Shamus – P.I. Novel

Hoodwink

Bill Pronzini