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New York, NY (September 10, 2026) – The National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards, today announced that it will award Salman Rushdie with the 2026 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (DCAL), which will be presented at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner on Wednesday, November 18, 2026. Rushdie is a novelist, essayist, and public intellectual whose expansive body of work blends magical realism, history, and political critique. The author of 15 novels and numerous works of nonfiction—including the memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, a Finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction—will be presented with the DCAL Medal by bestselling author Kiran Desai.
“A bold, innovative writer and an indefatigable defender of free speech, Salman Rushdie’s oeuvre and advocacy has inspired readers and writers across the past five decades and nearly two dozen published books,” said David Steinberger, Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Book Foundation. “We are honored to recognize his illustrious and inspiring literary career with the 2026 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.”
Born in Bombay, India in 1947, Rushdie is the author of 15 novels, including Grimus; Midnight’s Children, winner of the 1981 Booker Prize; Shame; The Satanic Verses; Haroun and the Sea of Stories; The Moor’s Last Sigh; The Ground Beneath Her Feet; Fury; Shalimar the Clown; The Enchantress of Florence; Luka and the Fire of Life; Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights; The Golden House; Quichotte; and Victory City. Rushdie has also written the short story collections The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories and East, West; various essay collections, including Languages of Truth; the work of reportage The Jaguar Smile; and his first memoir Joseph Anton. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder—Rushdie’s intimate account of the 2022 attack on his life, its immediate aftermath, and his ongoing journey of physical rehabilitation and healing—was a Finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
“Salman Rushdie’s sweeping body of work is a celebration of literature’s power to shape narratives, build bridges, and form connections beyond borders, generations, and identities,” said Ruth Dickey, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation. “Rushdie’s novels and short story collections are set across real and imagined landscapes, and his writing thrives in its specificity—offering readers access to unflinchingly honest stories that are culturally, politically, and geographically varied. It is our distinct pleasure to honor Mr. Rushdie’s deeply transformative writing and rich literary career at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony.”
A longtime champion of the written word, Rushdie served as the president of PEN America from 2004-2006, and in 2005 co-founded the PEN World Voices Festival, an annual celebration of writers, international literature, and free expression. Rushdie is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Booker Prize; the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel; the National Arts Award; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; and the PEN Centenary Courage Award, among others. In 2007, he was knighted for his services to literature by Queen Elizabeth II. Rushdie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Rushdie is the 39th recipient of the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which was created in 1988 to recognize a lifetime of literary achievement. Previous recipients include Walter Mosley, Edmund White, Isabel Allende, Robert A. Caro, John Ashbery, Ursula K. Le Guin, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich, Karen Tei Yamashita, Art Spiegelman, Rita Dove, Barbara Kingsolver, and most recently, George Saunders. Nominations for the DCAL medal are made by former National Book Award Winners, Finalists, judges, and other writers and literary professionals from across the country. The final selection is made by the National Book Foundation’s Board of Directors. Recipients of the Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters receive $10,000 and a solid brass medal, presented at the National Book Awards.
The 77th National Book Awards will be held on Wednesday, November 18, 2026 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. The in-person Ceremony & Benefit Dinner, which will be livestreamed for readers everywhere, will include the presentation of the Foundation’s two lifetime achievement awards—the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the Literary Community and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters—as well as the 2026 National Book Award Winners in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. For more information about the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner and to register for the livestream, please visit nationalbook.org/awards.
Salman Rushdie is the bestselling author of 23 books, including Midnight’s Children, for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker Prize; Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories; two memoirs, Joseph Anton and Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, including Languages of Truth. His work has been translated into over 40 languages.
Photo credit: Michael SharkeyKiran Desai is the author of three novels, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, The Inheritance of Loss, which received the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and named one of the New York Times top ten books of 2025. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, and a Columbia University Medal of Excellence.
Header image: Salman Rushdie. (Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths)
