Pulitzer Prize Winners 2020

Pulitzer Prize Winners 2020

Finally, some good news to nudge the bad out of the headlines.  The 2020 Pulitzer Prize Awards have been announced! The talented winners will each receive a certificate and a cash award of $15,000. But, before the names of the big winners are revealed below, here’s a brief history of this prestigious award. Joseph Pulitzer, the Hungarian born newspaper publisher (New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch) and crusader for honest government, made provision in his 1904 will allocating $250,000 for scholarships and  awards for excellence in each of the following fields: journalism; letters and drama; education; and traveling scholarships. Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911 and the first prizes were awarded in 1917. Over the years, the Pulitzer Prize Board increased the number of categories to 21 with the  introduction of the poetry, music and photography awards.  In 2006, the Board bowed to the times and allowed online content in all fourteen of its journalism categories. In 2009, the competition expanded to include online-only news organizations.  In 2012, the Board adopted an all digital entry and judging system, replacing its reliance on the submission of scrapbooks. The formal announcement of the Prizes, made each April, states that the awards are made by the President of Columbia University on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board.  This long standing tradition was derived from the Pulitzer will, which established Columbia as the seat of the Prize administration.  

And, now here are some of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize Award Winners:  

Fiction: The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead.  The Nickel Boys, a spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida, is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption. In this brave and devastating follow-up to The Underground Railroad, for which the author won the Pulitzer and National Book Awards, Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history though his story of two boys who were, until recently, lost to history. It should be noted that Colson Whitehead is only the fourth writer to ever win the Pulitzer for fiction twice; the others were Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner and John Updike.

https://westchester.overdrive.com/media/4538801

https://westchester.overdrive.com/media/2631892

History: Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, by W. Caleb McDaniel.  This work is a masterfully researched exploration of a post Civil War reparations case based on the remarkable story of Henrietta Wood, a 19th century woman who was born into slavery, freed and then recaptured. Having survived kidnapping and re-enslavement, in 1870 she  went on to sue her captor and, remarkably, won damages in 1878. This book is not only the  portrait of an extraordinary individual, it is a searing reminder of the connections between slavery and the prison system that rose in its place.

https://westchester.overdrive.com/media/5066622

Biography: Sontag, Her Life and Work, by Benjamin Moser. Susan Sontag, one of the twentieth century’s towering intellectuals, left a legacy of writing that forms an indispensable key to modern culture. This authoritatively constructed biography captures the writer’s genius and humanity alongside her addictions, sexual ambiguities and volatile enthusiasms.

https://westchester.overdrive.com/media/4489712  

Poetry: The Tradition, by Jericho Brown.  Brown details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. His poems tell of  fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma through his invention of the duplex – a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues.

https://westchester.overdrive.com/media/4851582

General Nonfiction: The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border in the Mind of America, by Greg Grandin.  A sweeping and beautifully written book that probes the American myth of boundless expansion and provides a compelling context for thinking about the current political moment and our place in history.

https://westchester.overdrive.com/media/3602391

General Nonfiction: The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer and Care, by Ann Boyer.  An disturbing and unforgettable narrative about the brutality of illness and the impact of capitalism on cancer care in America.

https://westchester.overdrive.com/media/4538763

To learn about all of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize Award winners, particularly the Awards for journalism, and to see the runners up check out the website: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year