The 108th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism and in Arts and Letters were announced May 6. Pulitzer Prize administrator Marjorie Miller, v–p and global enterprise editor at the Associated Press, led the ceremony, which was livestreamed on YouTube.
Jayne Anne Phillips won in the fiction category for her novel Night Watch (Knopf). The two other finalists in fiction included Yiyun Li, for Wednesday’s Child (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and Ed Park, for Same Bed, Different Dreams (Random House).
Nathan Thrall won the general nonfiction award for A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy (Metropolitan Books). The other nominees in general nonfiction were John Valliant, for Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World (Knopf), and Siddharth Kara, for Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives (St. Martin’s).
Other literary winners included Jacqueline Jones, in the history category, for No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil Rights Era (Basic Books). The finalists were Michael Willrich, for American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Basic Books), and Elliott West, for Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion (University of Nebraska Press).
A dual award in biography went to both Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Ilyon Woo’s Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom (Simon & Schuster); Tracy Daugherty was named a finalist for Larry McMurtry: A Life (St. Martin's Press).
Cristina Rivera Garza, in the category of memoir and autobiography, won for Liliana’s Invisible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice (Hogarth). The finalists were Jonathan Rosen, for The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions (Penguin Press), and Andrew Leland, for The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight (Penguin Press).
Brandon Som’s Tripas: Poems (Georgia Review Books) won the in the poetry category, the finalists for which were Robyn Shiff, for The Information Desk: An Epic (Penguin Books), and Jorie Graham, for To 2040 (Copper Canyon Press). Eboni Booth won in drama for Primary Trust; the finalists were Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, for Here There Are Blueberries, and Shayok Misha Chowdhury, for Public Obscenities.
Pulitzer Prizes are awarded in 23 categories, and nominated finalists are not announced in advance. In 22 of the categories, winners receive a $15,000 cash award and a certificate. In the Public Service category, a news organization receives a gold medal. This year’s Public Service winner was ProPublica, for the work of Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Alex Mierjeski, and Kirsten Berg on “Friends of the Court,” a series on ethical questions and the conduct of U.S. Supreme Court justices.
Two special citations were awarded this year as well, one honoring the late writer and Black cultural critic Greg Tate, and the other honoring “the journalists covering Gaza.” On the latter, Miller said in her remarks, “The board recognizes the courageous work of journalists and media workers covering the war in Gaza. Under horrific conditions, an extraordinary number of journalists have died in the effort to tell the stories of Palestinians and aid workers in Gaza. This war also has claimed the lives of poets and writers among the casualties. As the Pulitzer Prizes honor categories of journalism, arts, and letters, we mark the loss of invaluable records of the human experience.”
Also during the prize announcements, Pulitzer board co-chair Neil Brown warned that “journalism is under threat. On college campuses, in state capitals and at local school boards, journalists are locked out in order to thwart their independent reporting.” Brown called for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, imprisoned in Russia since March 2023. “When we bestowed these awards last May, the Pulitzer board condemned [his] unlawful detention,” Brown said. “Here we are, a year later, and Evan is still a prisoner. This is outrageous, and the Pulitzer board renews the call to free Evan. Free him now.”
Miller and Brown’s references to journalists under threat alluded to a challenging year at Columbia University, which administers the Pulitzer Prizes. Tensions remain high after a semester of protest, counter-protest, and police action at Columbia, related to the war in Gaza. Pro-Palestinian students set up an encampment on the university’s South Lawn and, on April 30, were evicted by New York City Police, in a night marked by numerous arrests and accusations of the suppression of student journalists. On the same day as the prize announcements, Columbia canceled its main graduation ceremony, which ordinarily takes place on the South Lawn.
On May 1, the day after the NYPD’s actions at the encampment and nearby Hamilton Hall, which protesters had occupied, the Pulitzer Prize Board released a statement to honor student journalists across the U.S. and at Columbia specifically. “As we gather to consider the nation’s finest and most courageous journalism, the Pulitzer Prize Board would like to recognize the tireless efforts of student journalists across our nation’s college campuses, who are covering protests and unrest in the face of great personal and academic risk,” the board wrote. “We would also like to acknowledge the extraordinary real-time reporting of student journalists at Columbia University, where the Pulitzer Prizes are housed, as the New York Police Department was called onto campus on Tuesday night [April 30]. In the spirit of press freedom, these students worked to document a major national news event under difficult and dangerous circumstances and at risk of arrest.”
In October, the Pulitzer Prize awards ceremony is slated to be held in Low Memorial Library, across West 116th Street from the South Lawn and Hamilton Hall, the epicenter of the student protest.
