Using Award Lists As a RA Tool: The Pulitzer Prize Winners

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. 

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. For example, this year the staff of the New York Times won in the category of "International Reporting" for their "wide-ranging and revelatory coverage of Hamas’ lethal attack in southern Israel on October 7, Israel’s intelligence failures and the Israeli military’s sweeping, deadly response in Gaza."

This topic will become multiple award winning books-- both in fiction and nonfiction in the years to come.  This prize will also have people coming to you now for books set admits or about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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 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.

But here are those promised winners with why they won as well as some of the finalists 

Fiction: Night Watch, by Jayne Anne Phillips (Knopf)

A beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia’s Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War where a severely wounded Union veteran, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, long abused by a Confederate soldier, struggle to heal.

Finalists: Same Bed Different Dreams, by Ed Park (Random House) and Wednesday’s Child, by Yiyun Li (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Drama: Primary Trust, by Eboni Booth

A simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person’s life and enrich an entire community.

Finalists: Here There Are Blueberries, by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich and Public Obscenities, by Shayok Misha Chowdhury

History: No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era, by Jacqueline Jones (Basic Books)

A breathtakingly original reconstruction of free Black life in Boston that profoundly reshapes our understanding of the city’s abolitionist legacy and the challenging reality for its Black residents.

Finalists: American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, by Michael Willrich (Basic Books) and Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion, by Elliott West (University of Nebraska Press)

Biography: 2 winners and only 1 finalist

King: A Life, by Jonathan Eig (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

A revelatory portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. that draws on new sources to enrich our understanding of each stage of the civil rights leader’s life, exploring his strengths and weaknesses, including the self-questioning and depression that accompanied his determination.

and

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, by Ilyon Woo (Simon & Schuster)

A rich narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class and disability to hide in public on their journey to the North, where they became famous abolitionists while evading bounty hunters.

Finalist: Larry McMurtry: A Life, by Tracy Daugherty (St. Martin’s Press)

Memoir or Autobiography: Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice, by Cristina Rivera Garza (Hogarth)

A genre-bending account of the author’s 20-year-old sister, murdered by a former boyfriend, that mixes memoir, feminist investigative journalism and poetic biography stitched together with a determination born of loss.

Finalists: The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions, by Jonathan Rosen (Penguin Press) and The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight, by Andrew Leland (Penguin Press)

Poetry: Tripas: Poems, by Brandon Som (Georgia Review Books)

A collection that deeply engages with the complexities of the poet’s dual Mexican and Chinese heritage, highlighting the dignity of his family’s working lives, creating community rather than conflict.

Finalists: Information Desk: An Epic, by Robyn Schiff (Penguin Books) and To 2040, by Jorie Graham (Copper Canyon Press)

General Nonfiction: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, by Nathan Thrall (Metropolitan Books)

A finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank, told through a portrait of a Palestinian father whose five-year-old son dies in a fiery school bus crash when Israeli and Palestinian rescue teams are delayed by security regulations.

Finalists: Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, by Siddharth Kara (St. Martin’s Press) and Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, by John Vaillant (Knopf)