Which author won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Executioner's Song?

Norman Mailer won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Executioner's Song.

Mailer published the book in 1979. It is a nonfiction novel, or novelized true-crime account, about Gary Gilmore, whose 1976 murder convictions in Utah led to his execution by firing squad in January 1977. The book reconstructs events through extensive interviews, documents, and reported detail.

Gilmore became internationally known after refusing to pursue further appeals and insisting that his sentence be carried out. His execution was the first in the United States after the Supreme Court's 1976 decision allowing capital punishment to resume.

The Executioner's Song won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Its classification reflects Mailer's literary treatment of real events rather than an invented plot. It is sometimes confused with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, another influential nonfiction crime book, but Capote's work concerns the 1959 Clutter family murders in Kansas.