The John Dos Passos Prize is awarded annually to the best currently under-recognized American writer in the middle of their career.

The Prize was founded at Longwood University

Longwood University

Longwood University is a four-year public, liberal-arts university located in Farmville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1839 and became a university on July 1, 2002...

 in 1980 and is meant to honor John Dos Passos

John Dos Passos

John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...

 by recognizing other writers in his name. The prize is administered by a committee from the Department of English and Modern Languages; the chair of the committee also serves as the chair of the prize jury. Other members on the committee include the immediate past recipient and a distinguished critic, editor, or scholar.

Recipients of the prize receive $2,000 and a bronze medal engraved with their name.

Recipients

1980 1980 in literature The year 1980 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Marguerite Yourcenar becomes the first woman to be elected to the Académie française....	Graham Greene Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...	(Awarded before the prize was limited to strictly American authors.)
1981 1981 in literature The year 1981 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction given for the first time...	Gilbert Sorrentino Gilbert Sorrentino Gilbert Sorrentino was an American novelist, short story writer, poet, literary critic, and editor.In over twenty-five works of fiction and poetry, Sorrentino explored the comic and formal possibilities of language and literature...
1982 1982 in literature The year 1982 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*La Bicyclette Bleue by Régine Deforges becomes France's best selling novel ever.-New books:...	Robert Stone
1983 1983 in literature The year 1983 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Ironweed by William Kennedy is published.*Salvage for the Saint by Peter Bloxsom and John Kruse is published. This is the final book in a series of novels, novellas and short stories featuring the Leslie Charteris...	Doris Betts Doris Betts Doris June Betts is a short story writer, novelist, essayist and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emerita at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill....
1984 1984 in literature The year 1984 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The book Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is widely read....	Tom Wolfe Tom Wolfe Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...
1985 1985 in literature The year 1985 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire*Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale*Jean M. Auel - The Mammoth Hunters*Iain Banks - Walking on Glass...	Russell Banks Russell Banks Russell Banks is an American writer of fiction and poetry.- Biography :Russell Banks was born in Newton, Massachusetts on March 28, 1940. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in upstate New York, and has been named a New York State Author. He is also...
1986 1986 in literature The year 1986 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Michael Grade. Controller of BBC One, axes plans to televise Ian Curteis's The Falklands Play.-New books:*Kingsley Amis - The Old Devils...	John Edgar Wideman John Edgar Wideman John Edgar Wideman is an American writer, professor at Brown University, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.-Early life:...
1987 1987 in literature The year 1987 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Tom Wolfe was paid $5 million for the film rights to his novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, the most ever earned by an author, at the time.-Fiction:...	Lee Smith Lee Smith (author) Lee Smith is an American fiction author who typically incorporates much of her home roots in the Southeastern United States in her works of literature. She has received many writing awards, such as the O. Henry Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the North...
1988 1988 in literature The year 1988 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Margaret Atwood - Cat's Eye*J.G. Ballard - Memories of the Space Age*Iain M...	Shelby Foote Shelby Foote Shelby Dade Foote, Jr. was an American historian and novelist who wrote The Civil War: A Narrative, a massive, three-volume history of the war. With geographic and cultural roots in the Mississippi Delta, Foote's life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian planter system of the...
1989 1989 in literature The year 1989 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* February 24 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini places a US$3 million bounty for the death of The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie.-Literature:...	Paule Marshall Paule Marshall Paule Marshall is an American author. She was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn to Barbadian parents and educated at Girls High School, Brooklyn College and Hunter College . Early in her career, she wrote poetry, but later returned to prose...
1990 1990 in literature The year 1990 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*J. K. Rowling gets the idea for Harry Potter while on a train ride from Manchester to London. She says "I was staring out the window, and the idea for Harry just came. He appeared in my mind's eye, very fully formed...	Larry Woiwode Larry Woiwode Larry Alfred Woiwode is an American writer who lives in North Dakota, where he has been the state's Poet Laureate since 1995. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, Gentleman's Quarterly, The Partisan Review and The Paris Review...
1991 1991 in literature The year 1991 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Douglas Coupland publishes the novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularizing the term Generation X as the name of the generation....	Elizabeth Spencer Elizabeth Spencer (writer) Elizabeth Spencer is a writer. Spencer's first novel, Fire in the Morning, was published in 1948. She has written a total of nine novels, seven collections of short stories, a memoir , and a play...
1992 1992 in literature The year 1992 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Ben Aaronovitch - Transit*Julia Álvarez - How the García Girls Lost Their Accents*Paul Auster - Leviathan*Iain Banks - The Crow Road...	William Hoffman William Hoffman (author) William Hoffman was an American writer who published thirteen novels and four books of short stories. He lived in Charlotte Court House, Virginia....
1993 1993 in literature The year 1993 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Professor Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, becomes the longest running book on the bestseller list of The Sunday Times....	Ernest J. Gaines
1994 1994 in literature The year 1994 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Kevin J. Anderson - Champions of the Force, Dark Apprentice and Jedi Search*Reed Arvin - The Wind in the Wheat*Greg Bear - Songs of Earth and Power...	James Welch James Welch (poet) James Welch , was an award-winning U.S. author and poet. He received national literary awards for Fools Crow. In addition, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas in 1997....
1995 1995 in literature The year 1995 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea is opened by Jimmy Carter....	Helena Maria Viramontes Helena Maria Viramontes Helena Maria Viramontes is an American fiction writer and professor of English.-Childhood and education:Viramontes was born into a Mexican-American family....
1997 1997 in literature The year 1997 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Tom Clancy signs a book deal with Pearson Custom Publishing and Penguin Putnam Inc. , giving him US$50 million for the world-English rights to two new books . A second agreement gives him another US$25 million for a...	E. Annie Proulx E. Annie Proulx Edna Annie Proulx is an American journalist and author. Her second novel, The Shipping News , won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994, and was made into a film in 2001...
1998 1998 in literature The year 1998 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*March 5 - Tennessee Williams' 1938 play, Not About Nightingales, receives its stage première....	Maxine Hong Kingston Maxine Hong Kingston Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United...
1999 1999 in literature The year 1999 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*June 19 - Stephen King is hit by a Dodge van while taking a walk. He spends the next three weeks hospitalized...	Eric Kraft Eric Kraft Eric Kraft is an American novelist. He is known for his series of novels that make up "The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy". Each novel tells of some aspect of the fictional Peter Leroy's life, with several of them supposed to have been written by Leroy...
2000 2000 in literature The year 2000 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* February 13 - Final original Peanuts comic strip is published...	Jill McCorkle Jill McCorkle Jill Collins McCorkle is an American short story writer, and novelist.She graduated from University of North Carolina, in 1980, where she studied with Max Steele, Lee Smith, and Louis D...
2001 2001 in literature The year 2001 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The film version of J. R. R. Tolkien's classic book, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, is released to movie theaters...	Madison Smartt Bell Madison Smartt Bell Madison Smartt Bell is an American novelist. He was raised Nashville, and lived in New York, and London before settling in Baltimore, Maryland....
2002 2002 in literature The year 2002 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*March 16: Authorities in Saudi Arabia arrested and jailed poet Abdul Mohsen Musalam and fired a newspaper editor following the publication of Musalam's poem The Corrupt on Earth that criticized the state's Islamic...	Randall Kenan Randall Kenan Randall Kenan is an American author of fiction and nonfiction. Raised in a rural community in North Carolina, Kenan has focused his fiction on what it means to be black and gay in the southern United States. Among his books is the collection of short stories Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, which was...
2003 2003 in literature The year 2003 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Peter Ackroyd - The Clerkenwell Tales*Atsuko Asano - No...	Richard Powers Richard Powers Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology.- Life and work :...
2004 2004 in literature The year 2004 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Canada Reads selects Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing to be read across the nation....	Maureen Howard Maureen Howard Maureen Howard is an American writer, editor, and lecturer known for her award-winning autobiography Facts of Life.She was born Maureen Kearns in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Her father William L. Kearns worked for the State's Attorney's Office as a detective where he was assigned to the Harold Israel...
2005 2005 in literature The year 2005 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*February 25 - Canada Reads selects Rockbound by Frank Parker Day as the novel to be read across the nation....	Tim Gautreaux Tim Gautreaux Timothy Martin Gautreaux is a novelist and short story writer who lives in Hammond, Louisiana, where he is Writer in Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University....
2006 2006 in literature The year 2006 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Literature:*Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun*Chris Adrian - The Children's Hospital *Martin Amis - House of Meetings...	Kent Haruf Kent Haruf Kent Haruf is an award-winning American novelist.-Life:Haruf was born in Pueblo, Colorado, the son of a Methodist minister...
2008 2008 in literature The year 2008 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*January 1 - In the 2008 New Year Honours, Hanif Kureishi , Jenny Uglow , Peter Vansittart and Debjani Chatterjee are all rewarded for "services to literature".*June 15 - Gore Vidal, asked in a New York Times...	Allen Wier Allen Wier Allen Wier , is an American writer and a professor at the University of Tennessee.Wier was born in 1946 in San Antonio, Texas and spent parts of his childhood in Louisiana and Mexico...
2009 2009 in literature The year 2009 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*8 October - Romanian-born German novelist Herta Müller wins the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature....	Robert Bausch Robert Bausch Robert Bausch is an American fiction writer, the author of six novels and one collection of short stories. He is currently a Professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College, and he has taught at the University of Virginia, The American University, Johns Hopkins University, George Mason...
2010 2010 in literature The year 2010 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*February - The Wheeler Centre, Australia's "literary hub", officially opened.*April 3 - First release of the Apple iPad, electronic book reading device....	Percival Everett Percival Everett Percival Everett is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.-Life:Everett lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, novelist Danzy Senna and their two sons....
2011 2011 in literature The year 2011 will involve some significant events and new books.-Events:*Tomas Tranströmer wins the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature.*Jennifer Egan wins the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel A Visit From the Goon Squad.-Literature:*T.C...	Mat Johnson Mat Johnson Mat Johnson is an American writer of literary fiction.-Biography:Born and raised in the Germantown and Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Johnson writes primarily about the lives of African-Americans, using fiction, nonfiction and graphic novels as mediums...