It’s that time of the year again: the winners of the prestigious Pulitzer awards for achievements in literature were recently announced! Let’s take a look.
Fiction
The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in The History of a Very Famous Family by Joshua Cohen
A sharp and linguistically clever historical novel about the struggles of the Jewish-American experience.
General Nonfiction
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott
A portrait of a girl’s coming of age and experiences with homelessness, racism, and poverty in New York City.
History
Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace
An account of Indigenous justice in early America—and the US treaty it led to.
History
Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer
Pulitzer jurors call this an “original and compelling history” of the island. Spanning five centuries, Cuba sheds light on how we think not only about US policy in Latin America but about Cuba in American society.
Biography
Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by the late Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly
Rembert survived a lynching, spent seven years on a prison chain gang and then, in mid-life, became an artist whose etchings and paintings reflected scenes of his youth in the segregated South.
Poetry
frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss
“The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without,” Seuss writes in her most personal collection to date. This work confronts the contradictions of contemporary America, including the beauty and difficulties of working-class life in the country’s Rust Belt.
