Colson Whitehead Wins Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction

I just noticed Monday's announcement that Colson Whitehead has won yet another literary award. This time it's the Library of Congress presenting Whitehead with its prestigious Prize for American Fiction. 

Now the big deal about this particular award is that it is an award given for "lifetime achievement," an author's entire body of work. The prize was first awarded in 2008, but it was only decided in 2009 that it would be awarded annually. 

The list of past winners already reads like a Who's Who of American fiction: 

                                                            2008   Herman Wouk

                                    2009   John Grisham

                                    2010   Isabel Allende

                                    2011   Toni Morrison

                                    2012   Philip Roth

                                    2013   Don DeLillo

                                    2014   E.L. Doctorow

                                    2015   Louise Erdrich

                                    2016   Marilynne Robinson

                                    2017   Denis Johnson

                                    2018   Anne Proulx

                                    2019   Richard Ford

It may not be readily apparent from this list, but Whitehead, at just 50 years of age, is the youngest writer to have won it to this point. More impressive to me, however, is that Whitehead is already the first author to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for consecutive novels, The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys. I can't imagine that ever happening again.

I didn't end up with a copy of The Nickel Boys on my shelves, but I did end up with two first edition copies of The Underground Railroad, one of those signed by the author. Whitehead has one of those signatures that I'm not sure I could ever interpret out of context, but it's a whole lot more legible than some of the scribbles that pass for author signatures these days, so I'm happy with it.