Chicago Tribune 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 '
• 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

• 2019: Sarah Smarsh for Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
• 2018: Caroline Fraser for '
• 2017: Matthew Desmond for '
• 2016: Margo Jefferson for '
• 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 ' and What the Gospels Meant
• 2007: Orville Vernon Burton for The Age of Lincoln
• 2006: Taylor Branch for '
• 2005: Kevin Boyle for Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age
• 2004: Ann Patchett for '
• 2003: Paul Hendrickson for '
• 2002: Studs Terkel for '
• 2001: Louis Menand for '
• 2000: Zachary Karabell for '
• 1999: Jay Parini for '
• 1998: Alex Kotlowitz for '
• 1997: Thomas Lynch for '
• 1996: Jonathan Harr for A Civil Action
• 1995: Richard Stern for A Sistermony
• 1994: Henry Louis Gates Jr. for '
• 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