James Agee won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for A Death in the Family.
A Death in the Family is a semi-autobiographical novel about a family in Knoxville, Tennessee, coping with the sudden death of a father. Agee drew on the death of his own father in a 1916 automobile accident, when Agee was a child. The novel explores grief through the perspectives of family members, including children and adults.
Agee died in 1955, before the book was published. His editor, David McDowell, assembled the manuscript, and the novel appeared posthumously in 1957. It received the Pulitzer the following year.
The award is sometimes incorrectly attributed to the year of publication. The distinction matters here because the novel was published in 1957 but won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1958. Agee was also known for his work as a film critic and screenwriter.