How Pulitzer Prize Winners Wrote Their Masterpieces: Pencils, Typewriters & Computers (1918–2025)
A comprehensive investigation into the writing instruments and methods used by every Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner. Instead of trying to PROVE typewriter use, I thought I’d just showcase the data. I was also curious.
I reached into the archives, interviews, biographies, and auction records to answer these questions for every Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner from the award's inception in 1918 through 2025.
Note: The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction began in 1918 (originally called "Prize for the Novel" until 1948).
The Three Eras of Literary Creation
Era 1: The Typewriter Age (1918–1939)
The early Pulitzer winners worked almost exclusively on typewriters. Underwood, Remington, Royal, and Corona dominated writers' desks.
Notable exception: Edith Wharton (1921, The Age of Innocence) wrote her first drafts in bed each morning with a fountain pen, then dictated revisions to her secretary.
Era 2: The Golden Hybrid Period (1940–1969)
This era saw many writers develop a two-stage process: handwritten first drafts followed by typewriter revision. Some of literature's most celebrated writing rituals emerged during this time.
Era 3: The Digital Revolution (1990–Present)
Computers gradually replaced typewriters, though many authors still begin with pen and paper before moving to screens.
The Most Fascinating Writing Rituals
John Steinbeck — The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Tool: Blackwing 602 Pencils
Steinbeck had one of literature's most elaborate pencil rituals. Each morning, he would:
Sharpen exactly 24 Blackwing 602 pencils to surgical points
Place them in a cup on his desk
Write until each pencil dulled, then move it to a second cup
Repeat the process when all 24 were used
He called the Blackwing 602 "the best I have ever had" and wrote: "Sometimes just the pure luxury of long beautiful pencils charges me with energy and invention."
Ernest Hemingway — The Old Man and the Sea (1953)
Tool: Pencil first drafts, then Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter
Hemingway never started a first draft on a typewriter—always pencil. He stood while writing, using a reading board at chest height, and measured his daily progress by pencil consumption:
"Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day's work."
His reasoning was practical:
"If you write with a pencil you get three different sights at it to see if the reader is getting what you want him to. First when you read it over; then when it is typed you get another chance to improve it, and again in the proof. Writing it first in pencil gives you one-third more chance to improve it. That is .333 which is a damned good average for a hitter."
William Faulkner — A Fable (1955), The Reivers (1963)
Tool: Pencil (tiny longhand), then Underwood Universal Portable typewriter
Faulkner wrote all his novels in longhand first, explaining: "I've got to feel the pencil and see the words at the end of the pencil."
The problem? His handwriting was so small and illegible that even he had trouble reading it. He would then spend up to 13 hours straight typing his handwritten drafts. His stepson recalled hearing the tap-tap of the typewriter at odd hours throughout the night at Rowan Oak, Faulkner's home in Oxford, Mississippi.
Harper Lee — To Kill a Mockingbird (1961)
Tool: Underwood typewriter
Lee was a painstaking writer who spent 6 to 12 hours a day at her typewriter while composing Mockingbird, often producing only a single page of text. She used a manual typewriter for all her correspondence and writing throughout her entire life, famously living without computers, cell phones, or even a washing machine. When she needed to do laundry, she went to the laundromat.
Her connection to typewriters began in childhood—her father gave her and her neighbor Truman Capote an old Underwood to share, and they began writing stories together.
Eudora Welty — The Optimist's Daughter (1973)
Tool: Underwood Portable typewriter, spiral notebooks for drafts
Welty drafted much of her work longhand in spiral notebooks before typing. Her Underwood Portable became an extension of her creative process in Jackson, Mississippi, where she lived nearly her entire life.
Cormac McCarthy — The Road (2007)
Tool: Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter
McCarthy's story is legendary. In 1963, he bought a light-blue Olivetti Lettera 32 portable typewriter from a pawn shop in Knoxville, Tennessee for $50. He then proceeded to write approximately 5 million words on this single machine over the next 46 years, including:
Blood Meridian
All the Pretty Horses
No Country for Old Men
The Road
His maintenance routine? "Blowing out the dust with a service station hose."
In 2009, when the machine finally needed retirement, Christie's auction house sold it for $254,500—more than 5,000 times what he paid for it. The proceeds went to the Santa Fe Institute. A friend bought McCarthy an identical replacement model for $11 plus $19.95 shipping.
Book dealer Glenn Horowitz captured the typewriter's significance: "It's as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss Army knife."
Toni Morrison — Beloved (1988)
Tool: Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 soft pencil on yellow legal pads
Morrison woke at 4 a.m. to write before her day job as a senior editor at Random House. Her process was ritualistic:
Make coffee
Watch the sunrise
Write longhand on yellow legal pads with a No. 2 pencil
Type the draft into a computer
Print and mark up changes
Repeat: "Back and forth, back and forth"
When asked about her tools in a Paris Review interview:
Interviewer: Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 soft?
Morrison: Exactly.
She tried using a tape recorder once to capture ideas while driving. "It was a disaster," she said. "I don't trust my writing that is not written."
Marilynne Robinson — Gilead (2005)
Tool: Longhand first, then computer
Robinson wrote her debut novel Housekeeping (1980) entirely in longhand because she didn't own a computer and found typewriter noise distracting. For Gilead, which came 24 years later, she went "back and forth" between longhand and computer.
The novel began in a near-empty hotel in Provincetown at Christmas. With her sons delayed, Robinson found herself alone with a spiral notebook, Emily Dickinson light pouring through the windows, and the ocean roaring beyond. She started writing and, as she put it, "was happy for the company."
President Obama, a devoted fan, once referenced her "messy longhand" in an interview with her for The New York Review of Books.
Colson Whitehead — The Underground Railroad (2017), The Nickel Boys (2020)
Tool: Laptop computer
Whitehead represents the modern era. He's a self-described "stay-at-home writer" who works on his laptop:
"If I'm in a café with my laptop, I can't break down weeping or take a nap. At my house, I can walk around, lie down, make a ham sandwich."
His goal: 8 pages per week. "As long as I make my eight pages a week, I feel pretty good, like I'm putting a dent in it."
Complete List: All Pulitzer Fiction Winners & Their Writing Methods
Year Author Book Writing Method 2025 Percival Everett James Computer 2024 Jayne Anne Phillips Night Watch Computer 2023 Barbara Kingsolver Demon Copperhead Computer 2023 Hernan Diaz Trust Computer 2022 Joshua Cohen The Netanyahus Computer 2021 Louise Erdrich The Night Watchman Longhand first drafts, then computer 2020 Colson Whitehead The Nickel Boys Laptop 2019 Richard Powers The Overstory Computer with voice recognition 2018 Andrew Sean Greer Less Computer 2017 Colson Whitehead The Underground Railroad Laptop 2016 Viet Thanh Nguyen The Sympathizer Computer 2015 Anthony Doerr All the Light We Cannot See Computer 2014 Donna Tartt The Goldfinch Longhand, then typewriter/computer 2013 Adam Johnson The Orphan Master's Son Computer 2012 No award — — 2011 Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad Computer (one chapter handwritten) 2010 Paul Harding Tinkers Computer 2009 Elizabeth Strout Olive Kitteridge Computer 2008 Junot Díaz The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Computer 2007 Cormac McCarthy The Road Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter 2006 Geraldine Brooks March Computer 2005 Marilynne Robinson Gilead Longhand first, then computer 2004 Edward P. Jones The Known World Computer 2003 Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex Computer 2002 Richard Russo Empire Falls Computer 2001 Michael Chabon The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay Computer 2000 Jhumpa Lahiri Interpreter of Maladies Computer 1999 Michael Cunningham The Hours Computer 1998 Philip Roth American Pastoral Longhand notes, then IBM Selectric 1997 Steven Millhauser Martin Dressler Typewriter/Computer 1996 Richard Ford Independence Day Computer 1995 Carol Shields The Stone Diaries Computer 1994 E. Annie Proulx The Shipping News Computer 1993 Robert Olen Butler A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain Computer 1992 Jane Smiley A Thousand Acres Computer 1991 John Updike Rabbit at Rest Olympia typewriter 1990 Oscar Hijuelos The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Typewriter 1989 Anne Tyler Breathing Lessons Typewriter, later computer 1988 Toni Morrison Beloved Pencil on yellow legal pads, then computer 1987 Peter Taylor A Summons to Memphis Typewriter 1986 Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove Hermes 3000 typewriter 1985 Alison Lurie Foreign Affairs Typewriter 1984 William Kennedy Ironweed Typewriter 1983 Alice Walker The Color Purple Typewriter 1982 John Updike Rabbit Is Rich Olympia typewriter 1981 John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces Typewriter (posthumous) 1980 Norman Mailer The Executioner's Song Typewriter/Longhand 1979 John Cheever The Stories of John Cheever Typewriter 1978 James Alan McPherson Elbow Room Typewriter 1977 No award — — 1976 Saul Bellow Humboldt's Gift Typewriter 1975 Michael Shaara The Killer Angels Typewriter 1974 No award — — 1973 Eudora Welty The Optimist's Daughter Underwood Portable, spiral notebooks 1972 Wallace Stegner Angle of Repose Typewriter 1971 No award — — 1970 Jean Stafford Collected Stories Typewriter 1969 N. Scott Momaday House Made of Dawn Typewriter 1968 William Styron The Confessions of Nat Turner Yellow legal pads, then typewriter 1967 Bernard Malamud The Fixer Typewriter 1966 Katherine Anne Porter Collected Stories Typewriter/Longhand 1965 Shirley Ann Grau The Keepers of the House Typewriter 1964 No award — — 1963 William Faulkner The Reivers Pencil longhand, then Underwood (posthumous) 1962 Edwin O'Connor The Edge of Sadness Typewriter 1961 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird Underwood typewriter 1960 Allen Drury Advise and Consent Typewriter 1959 Robert Lewis Taylor The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters Typewriter 1958 James Agee A Death in the Family Typewriter (posthumous) 1957 No award — — 1956 MacKinlay Kantor Andersonville Typewriter 1955 William Faulkner A Fable Pencil longhand, then Underwood 1954 No award — — 1953 Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea Pencil first drafts, then Royal typewriter 1952 Herman Wouk The Caine Mutiny Typewriter 1951 Conrad Richter The Town Typewriter 1950 A.B. Guthrie Jr. The Way West Typewriter 1949 James Gould Cozzens Guard of Honor Typewriter 1948 James A. Michener Tales of the South Pacific Typewriter 1947 Robert Penn Warren All the King's Men Typewriter/Longhand 1946 No award — — 1945 John Hersey A Bell for Adano Typewriter 1944 Martin Flavin Journey in the Dark Typewriter 1943 Upton Sinclair Dragon's Teeth Typewriter 1942 Ellen Glasgow In This Our Life Typewriter 1941 No award — — 1940 John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath Blackwing 602 pencils 1939 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings The Yearling Typewriter 1938 John P. Marquand The Late George Apley Typewriter 1937 Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind Remington typewriter 1936 Harold L. Davis Honey in the Horn Typewriter 1935 Josephine Winslow Johnson Now in November Typewriter 1934 Caroline Miller Lamb in His Bosom Typewriter 1933 T.S. Stribling The Store Typewriter 1932 Pearl S. Buck The Good Earth Typewriter 1931 Margaret Ayer Barnes Years of Grace Typewriter 1930 Oliver La Farge Laughing Boy Typewriter 1929 Julia Peterkin Scarlet Sister Mary Typewriter 1928 Thornton Wilder The Bridge of San Luis Rey Typewriter 1927 Louis Bromfield Early Autumn Typewriter 1926 Sinclair Lewis Arrowsmith Typewriter/Dictation (declined prize) 1925 Edna Ferber So Big Typewriter 1924 Margaret Wilson The Able McLaughlins Typewriter 1923 Willa Cather One of Ours Longhand first, then typewriter 1922 Booth Tarkington Alice Adams Typewriter 1921 Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence Fountain pen in bed, then dictation 1920 No award — — 1919 Booth Tarkington The Magnificent Ambersons Typewriter 1918 Ernest Poole His Family Typewriter
By the Numbers
Total winners: 97 authors (1918–2025)
Years with no award: 11
Typewriter only: ~45 authors
Pencil/pen first, then typewriter: ~20 authors
Computer: ~25 authors (mostly post-1990)
Hybrid (longhand + computer): ~7 authors
What This Tells Us
The evolution from pencil to typewriter to computer mirrors broader technological change, but what's striking is how many celebrated authors resisted the newest technology or developed hybrid approaches.
Hemingway's insistence on pencil drafts, Morrison's yellow legal pads, McCarthy's 46-year relationship with a single typewriter—these aren't quirks. They represent deliberate choices about the relationship between hand, tool, and thought.
As Morrison put it: "I don't trust my writing that is not written."
There's something to be said for friction in the creative process. The pencil that needs sharpening, the typewriter that demands commitment to each keystroke, the legal pad that can't autocorrect—these "limitations" may actually serve the work.
Or as Steinbeck wrote: "Sometimes just the pure luxury of long beautiful pencils charges me with energy and invention."