Tim O'Brien has earned numerous awards for his writing over the years, including the O'Henry Award in 1976 and 1978, the Best American Short Stories Award in 1977, the National Book Award for Fiction in 1979, the Heartland Award in 1990, the Melcher Book Award in 1991, the James Fenimore Cooper Prize in 1995, the Katherine Anne Porter Award in 2010, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2012, and the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award in 2013. He was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for his novel The Things They Carried.