Columbia University announced the winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes, which honor outstanding works of journalism, literature, and music.
Jayne Anne Phillips won the fiction award for Night Watch, her novel about three people in Civil War–era West Virginia asylum trying to take back their lives. The novel was previously longlisted for the National Book Award.
Named finalists in the fiction category were Ed Park for Same Bed Different Dreams and Yiyun Li for Wednesday’s Child.
The history award went to No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era by Jacqueline Jones. The nonfiction finalists were American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the U.S. Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century by Michael Willrich and Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansionby Elliott West.
Two books won in the biography category: King: A Life by Jonathan Eig and Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo; the latter was previously a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. Tracy Daugherty was named a finalist for Larry McMurtry: A Life.
Cristina Rivera Garza won the memoir or autobiography prize for Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice, with The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen and The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight by Andrew Leland honored as finalists.
The general nonfiction winner was A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall. Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara and Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World by John Vaillant were the finalists.
Winning in poetry was Brandon Som for Tripas, with the finalists named as Robyn Schiff for Information Desk and Jorie Graham for To 2040.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
