Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: Pulitzer Prize Edition

This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool.

Earlier this week the Pulitzer Prize winners were announced here. And of course you all know by know that Library favorite, former Booklist Editor, and card carrying Librarian Daniel Kraus won the fiction prize for Angel Down. Not for nothing, it is also a Horror book-- although the prize statement (here) goes out of its way to not use the H word.

I gave Angel Down an unequivocal starred review in Booklist and my colleague Lila Denning did the same in Library Journal. 

And here is the access to the link with this year's winners in every category as well as the the statement for why they won ( an addition I always enjoy).

I will post the text for the book specific awards below, but please note, all of these awards have implications for your collections and patrons. In the past, many of the reporting categories have lead to books that become popular. So while I will focus on the Book awards, please don't sleep on the reporting awards.

And the Pulitzer Prizes also have awards for drama, music, and poetry. There is a lot to use here to help readers.

Please note, this link will take you to this year's winners with access to every winner on the left hand side of the page, going back to 1917. Backlist access made easy. Since both Kraus and Jill Lapore (History winner) are both very popular authors with our readers, now is a great time to leverage their wins and make an award of books that have won this award. Also include the finalists for every year. Again, easy access to the backlist is here.

This display will have wide appeal; it will have fiction and nonfiction; and it will have titles that are still great reads but have been languishing on the shelf. Focus on the last 5 years to start. And if you need more books, so back a year at a time. Consider a bookmark that sticks out and has the year it won (or was named a finalist).

The winners of the Pulitzer Prize in the book categories are always titles you have already and are titles that people have been interested in before they won. There is a track record here that you can leverage in those displays. They will see books they know and have heard of which will lead them to browse your display (in person and make online displays and lists) and consider all of the titles as potential reads. 

Here are those promised 2026 winners with why they won as well as the finalists to get you started.

Fiction: Angel Down, by Daniel Kraus (Atria Books)

A breathless novel of World War I, a stylistic tour-de-force that blends such genres as allegory, magical realism and science fiction into a cohesive whole, told in a single sentence.

Finalists:

• Audition, by Katie Kitamura (Riverhead Books)

• Stag Dance: A Quartet, by Torrey Peters (Random House)

History: We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, by Jill Lepore (Liveright)

A lively and engaging narrative that investigates why the Constitution is so difficult to amend, including a review of noteworthy failed amendments proposed by marginalized groups. 

Finalists: 

• King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation, by Scott Anderson (Doubleday)

• Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and The Remaking of the American City, by Bench Ansfield (W.W. Norton & Company) 

Biography:  Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution, by Amanda Vaill (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

A lively and detailed biography of two daughters of wealthy and influential Dutch landowners who colored our nation’s history, using present tense to tell their story and past tense to chronicle the dramatic sweep of the American Revolution.

Finalists:

• True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen, by Lance Richardson (Pantheon)

• The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford, by James McWilliams (University of Arkansas Press)

Memoir or Autobiography:  Things in Nature Merely Grow, by Yiyun Li (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

A writer’s deeply moving and revelatory account of losing her younger son to suicide a little more than six years after her older son died in the same manner, an austere and defiant memoir of acceptance that focuses on facts, language and the persistence of life. 

Finalists:

• Clam Down: A Metamorphosis, by Anelise Chen (One World)

• Bibliophobia: A Memoir, by Sarah Chihaya (Random House)

• I'll Tell You When I'm Home: A Memoir, by Hala Alyan (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)

General Nonfiction:  There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America, by Brian Goldstone (Crown)

A feat of reportage, analysis and storytelling focusing on the issues that have created a national crisis of family homelessness among the so-called working poor.

Finalists:

• A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children, by Haley Cohen Gilliland (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)

• Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church, by Kevin Sack (Crown)