2016 Nobel Prize in Literature
- Bob Dylan (winner)
2016 Pulitzer Prizes
- The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen (Fiction Winner)
- Get in Trouble: Stories – Kelly Link (Fiction Finalist)
- Maud's Line – Margaret Verble (Fiction Finalist)
- Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS – Joby Warrick (General Non-Fiction Winner)
- Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates (Non-Fiction Finalist)
- If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran – Carla Power (Non-Fiction Finalist)
- Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America – T.J. Stiles (History Winner)
- Marching Home: Union Veterans and their Unending Civil War – Brian Matthew Jordan (History Finalist)
- The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top Secret Military Research Agency – Annie Jacobsen (History Finalist)
- Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid that Avenged Pearl Harbor – James M. Scott (History Finalist)
- Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life – William Finnegan (Biography/Autobiography Winner)
- Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America – T.J. Stiles (Biography/Autobiography Finalist)
- The Light of the World: A Memoir – Elizabeth Alexander (Biography/Autobiography Finalist)
2016 National Book Award
- The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead (Fiction Winner)
- Another Brooklyn – Jacqueline Woodson (Fiction Finalist)
- The Association of Small Bombs – Karan Mahajan (Fiction Finalist)
- News of the World – Paulette Jiles (Fiction Finalist)
- The Throwback Special – Chris Bachelder (Fiction Finalist)
- Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America – Ibram X. Kendi (Non-Fiction Winner)
- Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy – Heather Ann Thompson (Non-Fiction Finalist)
- Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War – Viet Thanh Nguyen (Non-Fiction Finalist)
- The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America – Andres Resendez (Non-Fiction Finalist)
- Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right – Arlie Russell Hochschild (Non-Fiction Finalist)
2016 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
- Delicious Foods – James Hannaham (Winner)
- Mendocino Fire – Elizabeth Tallent (Finalist)
- Mr. and Mrs. Doctor – Julie Iromuanya (Finalist)
- The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen (Finalist)
- The Water Museum – Luis Alberto Urrea (Finalist)
2016 Audies
- Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins (Audiobook of the Year)
- The Nightingale – Kristin Hannah (Fiction Winner)
2016 PEN Literary Awards
- In the Country: Stories – Mia Alvar (Best Debut Fiction Winner)
- Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness – Jennifer Tseng (Best Debut Fiction Finalist)
- Mr. and Mrs. Doctor – Julie Iromuanya (Best Debut Fiction Finalist)
- The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen (Best Debut Fiction Finalist)
- The Turner House – Angela Flournoy (Best Debut Fiction Finalist)
- Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future – Lauren Redniss (Science Writing Winner)
2016 Man Booker Prize
- The Sellout – Paul Beatty (Winner)
- All That Man Is – David Szalay (Finalist)
- Do Not Say We Have Nothing – Madeleine Thien (Finalist)
- Eileen – Ottessa Moshfegh (Finalist)
- His Bloody Project – Graeme Macrae Burnet (Finalist)
- Hot Milk – Deborah Levy (Finalist)
2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction
- The Glorious Heresies – Lisa McInerney (Winner)
- The Green Road – Anne Enright (Finalist)
- The Improbability of Love – Hannah Rothschild (Finalist)
- A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara (Finalist)
- The Portable Veblen – Elizabeth McKenzie (Finalist)
- Ruby – Cynthia Bond (Finalist)
2016 Edgar Awards
- Let Me Die in His Footsteps – Lori Roy (Best Novel Winner)
- Canary – Duane Swierczynski (Finalist)
- The Lady From Zagreb – Philip Kerr (Finalist)
- Life or Death – Michael Robotham (Finalist)
- Night Life – David C. Taylor (Finalist)
- The Strangler Vine – M.J. Carter (Finalist)
2016 IACP Cookbook Awards
- The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science – J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (Cookbook of the Year)
2016 Caldecott Medal
- Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear – Lindsay Mattick, illustrated by Sophie Blackall (Winner)
2016 Kirkus Prize
- The Sport of Kings – C.E. Morgan (Fiction Winner)
- Barkskins – Annie Proulx (Fiction Finalist)
- Carousel Court – Joe McGinniss Jr. (Fiction Finalist)
- A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towles (Fiction Finalist)
- Imagine Me Gone – Adam Haslett (Fiction Finalist)
- The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead (Fiction Finalist)
- In the Darkroom – Susan Faludi (Non-Fiction Winner)
- At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre… – Sarah Bakewell (Non-Fiction Finalist)
- The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America – Michael Eric Dyson (Non-Fiction Finalist)
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City – Matthew Desmond (Non-Fiction Finalist)
- Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis – J.D. Vance (Non-Fiction Finalist)
- Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: a True Story of the Jim Crow South – Beth Macy (Non-Fiction Finalist)
2017 Reading Across Rhode Island
- Just Mercy – Bryan Stevenson