Honoring excellence in arts and letters, the Pulitzer Prizes are among the most prestigious awards in the United States. This year's highlights includes winners and finalists across Fiction, Nonfiction, Memoir, and Biography, reflecting an incredible breadth of scholarship and creativity as well as audio productions that are spectacular in their own right. Congratulations to all the honorees!
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Winner: Fiction
Written by Jayne Anne Phillips. Narrated by Karissa Vacker, Theo T. Stockman, and Maggi-Meg Reed.
In 1874, in the wake of the Civil War, erasure and trauma haunt civilians and veterans, freedmen and runaways, renegades and wanderers alike. After her father left for battle and never returned, 12-year-old ConaLee has been the adult in her family. She finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, inside a facility for the mentally disabled and vulnerable, they try to reclaim their lives—and discover kindness and other miracles. Night Watch presents a brilliant portrait of family endurance against formidable odds.
Finalist: Fiction
Written by Ed Park. Narrated by Daniel K. Isaac, Dominic Hoffman, and Shannon Tyo.
In 1919, far-flung patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, though, and after Japan’s defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the tragic North-South split that remains today. But what if the KPG still existed—now working toward a unified Korea, secretly pulling levers to further its aims? Weaving together three distinct narrative voices and twisting reality like a kaleidoscope, Same Bed Different Dreams is a thrilling meld of Korean history, American pop culture, and our tech-fraught lives that raises the possibility of a genuine utopia.
Finalist: Fiction
Written and narrated by Yiyun Li.
A grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she’s lost. Elsewhere, a professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year, a restless woman receives an email from a strange man twice her age and several states away. In this collection of stories, written and narrated by the award-winning author of The Book of Goose, people strive for an ordinary existence until doing so becomes unsustainable, until the surface cracks and the grand mysterious forces—death, violence, estrangement—come to light. Throughout Wednesday's Child, Yiyun Li explores loss, alienation, aging, and the strangeness of contemporary life with unnerving beauty and wisdom.
Winner: Biography
Written by Ilyon Woo. Narrated by Janina Edwards and Leon Nixon.
In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. They made their escape to freedom together—with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled white man and William posing as “his” slave. Hiding in plain sight, the Crafts dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North. But even then, they were not out of danger. Master Slave Husband Wife tells their remarkable true story of daring, determination, disguise, and love.
Winner: Biography
Written by Jonathan Eig. Narrated by Dion Graham.
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists.
Finalist: Biography
Written by Tracy Daugherty. Narrated by Matt Godfrey.
In more than 40 books and a career that spanned over 60 years, Larry McMurtry staked his claim as a superior chronicler of the American West and the keenest witness of the Great Plains since Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. Larry McMurtry: A Life traces his origins as one of the last American writers who had direct contact with this country’s pioneer traditions. It follows his astonishing career as bestselling novelist, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of the beloved Lonesome Dove, Academy Award-winning screenwriter, public intellectual, and passionate bookseller. A sweeping and insightful look at a versatile, one-of-a-kind American writer, this book is a must-listen for every Larry McMurtry fan.
Winner: Memoir or Autobiography
Written by Cristina Rivera Garza. Narrated by Victoria Villarreal.
On October 18, 2019, Cristina Rivera Garza travels from her home in Texas to Mexico City in search of an old, unresolved criminal file. “My name is Cristina Rivera Garza,” she writes in her request to the attorney general, “and I am writing to you as a relative of Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered on July 16, 1990.” It’s been 29 years. three months, and two days since Liliana was murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend. Inspired by feminist movements across the world and enraged by the global epidemic of intimate partner violence, Cristina embarks on a path toward justice for her sister. Liliana’s Invincible Summer is her searing account of that quest—and the outcome.
Finalist: Memoir or Autobiography
Written and narrated by Andrew Leland.
We meet Andrew Leland midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from sightedness to blindness over years, even decades. He grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from the outside in. Soon—but without knowing exactly when—he will likely have no vision left. Full of apprehension but also dogged curiosity, Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of being that awaits him—not only the physical experience of blindness but also its language, politics, and customs. Resounding with warmth, humor, and revelations, The Country of the Blind reflects Leland's determination to not merely survive his transition into a new way of being but to grow from it.
Finalist: Memoir or Autobiography
Written and narrated by Jonathan Rosen.
When his family moved to New Rochelle in 1973, Jonathan Rosen found a new best friend—and keen competitor—in Michael Laudor. Both children of college professors, the boys became inseparable, and, when they both got into Yale, seemed set to join the American meritocratic elite. To most of the world, Michael was a role model genius on the fast track to success—until he suffered a serious psychotic break and fell into the grip of unshakeable paranoia. With tenderness and compassion, Rosen offers a haunting investigation of the forces that led his closest childhood friend from the heights of brilliant promise to the forensic psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. A story about friendship, love, and the price of self-delusion, The Best Minds explores the ways in which we understand—and fail to understand—mental illness.
Winner: General Nonfiction
Written by Nathan Thrall. Narrated by Peter Ganim.
Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for a school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos—the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem. In A Day in the Life of Abed Salama , Nathan Thrall offers an indelibly human portrait of the struggle over Israel/Palestine.
Finalist: General Nonfiction
Written by Siddharth Kara. Narrated by Peter Ganim.
Most of us depend on cobalt, an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today—the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electrical cars. But few of us are aware of what is happening in the Congo, where roughly 75 percent of the world's cobalt supply is sourced from. In Cobalt Red, activist and researcher Siddharth Kara provides the first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara goes deep into cobalt territory to investigate militia-controlled mining areas, trace the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gather shocking testimonies from the Congolese people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.
Finalist: General Nonfiction
Written by John Vaillant. Narrated by Alan Carlson.
In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world. In Fire Weather, the award-winning author takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters.
