PREVIOUS LITERARY AWARDS SPEAKERS
1928 Zona Gale
1929 Elmer Davis
1930 Carl Sandburg
1931 Sherwood Anderson
1932 James Weber Linn
1933 Thornton Wilder
1934 Christopher Morley
1935 Stephen Leacock
1936 Theodore Dreiser
1937 William Allen White
1938 Thomas Wolfe
1939 Carl Van Doren
1940 Robert Frost
1941 Mary Ellen Chase
1942 Edward C. Elliott
No contest during the war
1947 Jesse Stuart
1948 Katherine Anne Porter
1949 Mark Van Doren
1950 John Crowe Ransom
1951 Warren Beck
1952 William Carlos Williams
1953 Louis Kronenberger
1954 Malcolm Cowley
1955 J. Frank Dobie
1956 Randall Jarrell
1957 Lillian Hellman
1958 John Ciardi
1959 John Crowe Ransom
1960 Richard Eberhart
1961 Herbert Gold
1962 William Golding
1963 Howard Nemerov
1964 Eudora Welty
1965 Andrew Lytle
1966 W. D. Snodgrass
1967 James T. Farrell
1968 Stanley Elkin
1969 Theodore Weiss
1970 Saul Bellow
1971 Allen Tate
1972 Tennessee Williams
1973 Anthony Burgess
1974 Gwendolyn Brooks
1975 Peter Taylor
1976 Stephen Spender
1977 Clive Barnes
1978 Edward Albee
1979 William Stafford
1980 Pauline Kael
1981 John Gardner
1982 Felix Stefanile
1983 William Gass
1984 Mary McCarthy
1985 John Williams
1986 John Irving
1987 John Ashbery
1988 John Barth
1989 Grace Paley
1990 Derek Walcott
1991 Margaret Drabble
1992 Adrienne Rich
1993 Louise Erdrich
1994 Robert Olen Butler
1995 Denise Levertov
1996 Sandra Gilbert
1997 Russell Banks
1998 Richard Ford
1999 Eavan Boland
2000 Jane Hamilton
2001 Ha Jin
2002 Seamus Heaney
2003 Tony Kushner
2004 Charles Wright
2005 Maxine Hong Kingston
2006 A. S. Byatt
2007 Sherman Alexie
2008 Michael Chabon
2009 Rita Dove
2010 Annie Proulx
2011 Charles Simic
2012 Michael Cunningham
2013 Mark Doty
2014 Zadie Smith
2015 Roz Chast
2016 Robert Hass
2017 Margaret Atwood
2018 Emily St. John Mandel
2019 Colson Whitehead
2021 Gish Jen
2022 Claudia Rankine
2023 Tracy K Smith
2024 Chris Abani