- 1956 Robert Frost
- 1957 John P. Marquand
- 1958 Archibald MacLeish and Dorothy Canfield Fisher
- 1959 Mary Ellen Chase
- 1960 Mark Van Doren
- 1961 Catherine Drinker Bowen
- 1962 David McCord
- 1963 John Hersey
- 1964 Ogden Nash
- 1965 Louis Untermeyer and Raymond Holden
- 1966 Robert Lowell
- 1967 John Kenneth Galbraith
- 1968 Richard Wilbur
- 1969 Lawrance Thompson
- 1970 Elizabeth Yates
- 1971 Norman Cousins
- 1972 May Sarton
- 1973 Henry Steele Commager
- 1974 Nancy Hale
- 1975 Edwin Way Teale
- 1976 John Ciardi
- 1977 Roger Tory Peterson
- 1978/79 James MacGregor Burns
- 1982 Richard Eberhart
- 1983 Donald Hall
- 1984 Barbara W. Tuchman
- 1985 Stephen Jay Gould
- 1986 Robert M. Coles
- 1987 David McCullough
- 1988 Hayden Carruth
- 1989 Doris Kearns Goodwin
- 1990 Arthur Miller
- 1991 Michael Dorris
- 1992 Maxine Kumin
- 1993 William Manchester
- 1994 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
- 1995 Jill Ker Conway
- 1996 Tom Wicker
- 1997 Wesley McNair
- 1998 Tracy Kidder
- 1999 Russell Banks
- 2000 Robert B. Parker
- 2001 Anita Shreve
- 2002 Ernest Hebert
- 2003 Jay Parini
- 2004 Charles Simic
- 2005 Grace Paley
- 2006 Ellen Goodman
- 2007 Tomie dePaola
- 2008 Ken Burns
- 2009 Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
- 2010 Geraldine Brooks
- 2011 Galway Kinnell
- 2012 Jill Lepore
- 2013 Richard Russo
- 2014 Bill McKibben
- 2015 Alan Taylor
- 2016 Sharon Olds
- 2017 Julia Alvarez
- 2018 Nathaniel Philbrick
- 2019 Jodi Picoult
- 2021 Sy Montgomery
