At the Community Bookstore in Park Slope in Brooklyn last Wednesday, booksellers were happily engaged in an annual parlor game of the publishing industry: guessing which title might win the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction on Monday.  Because the Pulitzer board couldn’t possibly be so cruel two years in a row, right?  In 2012, no Pulitzer for fiction was awarded for the first time in 35 years, leaving authors, publishers and retailers fuming at the missed opportunity for buzz, sales and exposure, and chafing at the perceived blow to literature’s prestige. This year, that slight has resulted in the Pulitzer race being watched a little more closely in advance of the official announcement on Monday afternoon.  “We’re counting on a Pulitzer win this year because of all the literary awards, I feel like the Pulitzer sells the most books,” said Michele Filgate, the events coordinator at the Community Bookstore. “Which is why it was so disappointing last year that there wasn’t one at all.”  Easily the biggest and most prestigious book prize in the United States, the Pulitzer Prize in fiction is awarded annually to an American author for a distinguished work of fiction.  Last year, a three-member jury, made up of two renowned writers and a veteran critic, reviewed 341 books and selected three finalists: “Swamplandia!” by Karen Russell; “Train Dreams” by Denis Johnson; and “The Pale King” by David Foster Wallace, who died in 2008. Then the judges on the Pulitzer board, a larger panel that includes journalists from a wide range of disciplines but not necessarily a specialty in literature, studied those books but did not find a majority winner.  “It was inconceivable to me last year that a prize wasn’t awarded, because it was such an extraordinary year for fiction, but this year is a phenomenal year for literary fiction,” said Jordan Pavlin, a senior editor at Knopf, naming books by Dave Eggers, Junot Diaz and George Saunders, as well as Nathan Englander and Ms. Russell, whose work Ms. Pavlin edits. “There were so many exceptional novels and story collections, it’s almost as if an entire generation of great American writers published into a single season.”  The Pulitzer board met last Thursday and Friday to select winners in all the categories.  Noreen Tomassi, the executive director of the Center for Fiction, said she hoped that the Pulitzer administrators would reconsider a process that allows the public to be left with the impression that no books in a given year are worthy of the prize.  “I think everyone will be watching very carefully this year,” Ms. Tomassi said. “What really annoyed me about last year was that the implication that there was something wrong with fiction — that they didn’t pick a work of fiction because there wasn’t a good enough work of fiction. And the problem was with the process, not the fiction.”  Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzers for Columbia University, said in an interview Friday that the basic process by which the prizes are selected has not changed, despite the outcry last year.  Accurately predicting who will win the Pulitzer is nearly impossible. But publishers, critics and booksellers named some contenders who might make up a shortlist, including “Arcadia” by Lauren Groff; “The Orphan Master’s Son” by Adam Johnson; “May We Be Forgiven” by A. M. Homes; “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” by Mr. Englander; “Magnificence” by Lydia Millet; and “Telegraph Avenue” by Michael Chabon.  Others suggested “The Round House” by Louise Erdrich, which won a National Book Award in October; and the books that were finalists for the same award: “A Hologram for the King” by Mr. Eggers; “The Yellow Birds” by Kevin Powers; “This Is How You Lose Her” by Mr. Diaz; and especially “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” by Ben Fountain. That book has emerged as a favorite for its beautifully sculptured sentences, sweeping ambition and big American themes, all qualities that the Pulitzer board tends to reward.  Ms. Filgate of the Community Bookstore named “Glaciers” by Alexis M. Smith, a quiet, slim, concise novel that she said was her favorite book of 2012. (Other highly praised novels from 2012, including Hilary Mantel’s “Bring Up the Bodies,” were ineligible because the author must be American.)  Mr. Gissler, the administrator of the prizes, said it was not impossible that a Pulitzer board would decline to award a prize in a category two years in a row.  Ruffling through some papers, he found at least one precedent: in 1963 and 1964, when no award for drama was given.  “It has happened before,” he said.
The publishing world â stinging after a 2012 in which the Pulitzer Prize board did not bestow a fiction award â hopes for a winner in 2013.