Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award

The Center for Fiction is thrilled to announce that Haruki Murakami will receive the 2025 Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award at our Annual Awards Benefit on Tuesday, December 9th at Cipriani 25 Broadway. Performer, artist, and writer Patti Smith, a longtime friend and admirer of Mr. Murakami, will join him on stage to present the award.

Patrick Chamoiseau received The Center for Fiction 2024 Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award. Author Daniel Alarcón presented the award to Chamoiseau at The Center for Fiction Annual Awards Benefit on December 10, 2024. Chamoiseau is a Martinican novelist, poet, and essayist whose multifaceted and boundary-breaking oeuvre, including his masterwork Texaco, has been translated worldwide. One of the most important literary figures of the Caribbean, Chamoiseau explores Creole identity and relational poetics in his work.

Author Salman Rushdie received The Center for Fiction 2023 Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award. The award was presented at The Center for Fiction Annual Awards Benefit at Cipriani 25 Broadway on December 5, 2023, where Rushdie appeared in conversation with author Kiran Desai.

Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist and political activist Wole Soyinka received The Center for Fiction Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award in 2022. The award was presented at The Center for Fiction Annual Awards Benefit at Cipriani 25 Broadway on December 6, 2022, where Soyinka appeared in conversation with Erroll McDonald, Chair of The Center for Fiction Board of Directors.

Nobel Laureate and Booker Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro received The Center for Fiction Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award in 2021. Ishiguro’s novels include The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, and Klara and the Sun; his writing expands ideas of what is possible in fiction, creating previously unexplored pathways for understanding our world—and creating new ones. The award was presented at The Center for Fiction Annual Awards Benefit and 200th Anniversary Celebration at Cipriani 25 Broadway on December 7, 2021, where Ishiguro appeared in conversation with New Yorker Editor David Remnick.

Toni Morrison, the first Black woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature and one of the greatest writers in American history, received our inaugural Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award. Author Jesmyn Ward has remarked of Morrison’s work, which includes masterpieces The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved, “Toni Morrison wrote to us again and again, exhorting our beauty, making us grapple with our pain, reaffirming our humanity.” Oprah Winfrey presented the award at our Annual Benefit and Awards Dinner on Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at Cipriani.