The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes for Letters were awarded in the book categories of fiction, history, biography poetry, and general nonfiction Monday afternoon.
The winner for fiction is Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Little, Brown), a story centered on an aging novelist and the evolving nature of love.
The Pulitzer for history was awarded to The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea by Jack E. Davis (Liveright), a comprehensive and deeply researched history of the Gulf of Mexico, focused on its history, past ecological abuse and inspired conservation efforts to protect its future.
The prize for biography was awarded to Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (Metropolitan Books), an elegantly written examination of Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series that deconstructs the series’ popular mythology of familial love and self-reliance to reveal the poverty, struggle and the unflattering reality of Wilder’s actual life.
The prize for poetry went to Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 by Frank Bidart (FSG), a volume of dramatic scope and ambition that uses classical mythology and short elliptical lyrics to assert the primacy of the creation of art in the transcendence of the circumstances of human life.
The Pulitzer for general nonfiction was awarded to Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr. (FSG), a complex and deeply knowledgeable examination of the U.S. criminal justice system, with a focus on Washington DC, that shows how black inner city residents are victimized by both over and under-policing.
The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes were announced by the Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy from Columbia University.
