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26 April 1968 Issue 18 October 1982
1950 Graduates co-valedictorian in the Shillington High School senior class.
1954 Graduates summa cum laude from Harvard College. Wins Knox Fellowship to attend the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford, England.
1959 Wins a Guggenheim Fellowship for support to write Rabbit, Run.
1960 Presented the Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for The Poorhouse Fair.
1963 Wins The National Book Award for The Centaur.
1964 Ursinsus College, Collegeville, PA, awards an honorary doctoral degree. Both of Updike's parents were graduates of Ursinus College. Elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the youngest, at 32, ever so honored.
1968 First Time magazine cover story recognition on April 26.
1967 Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA, awards an honorary doctoral degree.
1971 Awared the Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts.
1972 Appointed Honorary Consultant in American Letters to the Library of Congress (1972-1975).
1973 Appointed to a Lincoln Lecturship by the Fulbright Board of Foreign Scholarships for presentations in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
1974 Lafayette College, Easton, PA, awards an honorary doctoral degree.
1975 Wins the Lotus Club Award of Merit.
1976 Elected to the fifty-member Academy of Arts and Letters within the larger National Institute of Arts and Letters.
1981 Wins the National Book Critics Cricle Award for Rabbit Is Rich. Awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal for Literature.
1982 Wins The Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award for Rabbit Is Rich. Albright College, Reading, PA, awards an honorary doctoral degree. Second Time magazine cover story recognition on October 18.
1983 Receives the Pennsylvania Distinguished Artist award from the states Governor Thornbough. Wins The Lincoln Literary Award from The Union League Club. Amherst College awards an honorary doctoral degree.
1984 Wins the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism for Hugging the Shore. Awarded the National Arts Club Medal of Honor.
1985 Receives Kutztown University Foundation's Director's Award for community service.
1987 Receives the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Fiction.
1988 Receives the Life Achievement Award from Brandeis University.
1989 Receives The National Medal of Arts from President George H. W. Bush at The White House.
1991 Wins The Pulitzer Prize, his
second, and the Book Circle Critics
Award for Rabbit at
Rest. Only one of three American authors honored
twice with a Pulitzer Prize, and now his third Circle Critics Award.
Receives Italy’s Premio Scanno Prize
for Trust
Me.![[Image]](pict96.jpg)
1992 Harvard University bestows the Honorary Doctor of Letters Degree at its June 341st Commencement.
1993 Receives in Key West, FL, the second Conch Republic Prize for Literature for work done in the "daring and creative spirit of the Keys. Receives the Common Wealth Award.
1995 Awarded the French rank "Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres." Rabbit at Rest was awarded The Howells Medal by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Howells Medal is given every five years to the finest work of fiction of the preceding five years.
1996 Receives the Ambassador Book Award for In the Beauty of the Lilies from the English-Speaking Union "for illuminating the American experience."
1997 Receives The Campion Award from the Jesuit magazine America, for cultural contributions as "a Christian writer."
1998 Receives the Harvard Arts First Medal. The medal was presented during Arts First, the sixth annual celebration of the arts at Harvard. Presented The Thomas Cooper Library Medal at the University of South Carolina. Receives the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. The medal was presented at the National Book Award ceremony and dinner on November 18 at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel.
2000 Caldecott Award for A Child's Calendar. One of four Silver Seal awards. Receives the New England Pell Award in Providence, Rhode Island. Receives the fourth Enoch Pratt Society Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement at the Central Library in Mount Vernon, MD. The three previous awards went to Saul Bellow, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Barth.
2002 Presented The F. Scott Fitzgerald Award at Montgomery College in Roseville, MD. The seventh American writer to be so honored. The others were William Styron, John Barth, Joyce Carol Oates, E.L. Doctorow, Norman Mailer, and Ernest J. Gaines.
2003 Receives The National Medal for the Humanities from President George W. Bush November 14 at The White House, one of few to have been awarded the honor of both this and The National Medal of the Arts (1989). Appointed the second Weis Fellow Lecturer at Bucknell Univeristy in Lewisberg, PA, and presents lecture November 11.
2004 Receives the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Early Stories.
2005 Received the Carl Sandburg Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chicago Public Library on October 20. In April awarded, along with Philip Roth, The Paterson Fiction Prize, by The Poetry Center of Pasaic Community College.
2006 Presented The Rea Award for distinctive short story writing on September 11. On November 4 to receive the 2006 Nashville Public Library Literary Award by The Nashville Public Library Foundation.
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