Nothing sells fiction like the Pulitzer Prize, but this year — for the first time since 1977 — no fiction prize was awarded. Every year a jury of over-worked readers struggles through hundreds of novels to come up with three books to recommend to the Pulitzer board. This year, they chose Swamplandia by Karen Russell, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson and The Pale King by the late David Foster Wallace. The board turned them all down. Maureen Corrigan, Critic in Residence at Georgetown University and a columnist and book critic for NPR's Fresh Air, was a member of the Pulitzer jury.