The Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher and is administered by Columbia University. Prizes are awarded yearly in twenty-one categories. In twenty of the categories, each winner receives a certificate and a US$15,000 cash award. The winner in the public service category is awarded a gold medal.
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during the preceding calendar year. As the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, it was one of the original Pulitzers; the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year.
The Pulitzer Prize for Biography is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished biography, autobiography or memoir by an American author or co-authors, published during the preceding calendar year. Thus it is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year.
Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh is an American investigative journalist and political writer. He was a longtime contributor to The New Yorker magazine on national security matters and has also written for the London Review of Books since 2013.
Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead is an American novelist. He is the author of eight novels, including his 1999 debut work, The Intuitionist, and The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020 for The Nickel Boys. He has also published two books of non-fiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Genius Grant.
The Asbury Park Press is a daily newspaper in Monmouth and Ocean counties of New Jersey and has the third largest circulation in the state. It has been owned by Gannett since 1997.
Steve Coll is an American journalist, academic and executive. He is currently the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he is also the Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism. A staff writer for The New Yorker, he served as the president and CEO of the New America think tank from 2007 to 2012.
Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer, creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and was fiction editor at Boston Review. He also serves on the board of advisers for Freedom University, a volunteer organization in Georgia that provides post-secondary instruction to undocumented immigrants. Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience, particularly the Latino immigrant experience.
Laila Lalami is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor. After earning her Licence ès Lettres degree in Morocco, she received a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she earned an MA in linguistics.
Lawrence Wright is an American writer and journalist, who is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. Wright is best known as the author of the 2006 nonfiction book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Wright is also known for his work with documentarian Alex Gibney who directed film versions of Wright's one man show My Trip to Al-Qaeda and his book Going Clear. His 2020 novel, The End of October, a thriller about a pandemic, was released in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, to generally positive reviews.
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 is a 2006 non-fiction book by Lawrence Wright, a journalist for The New Yorker. Wright examines the origins of the militant organization Al-Qaeda, the background for various terrorist attacks and how they were investigated, and the events that led to the September 11 attacks.
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, abbreviated as Ghost Wars, is a book written by Steve Coll, published in 2004 by Penguin Press. It won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
David Barstow is an American journalist and journalism professor. While a reporter at The New York Times from 1999 to 2019, Barstow was awarded, individually or jointly, four Pulitzer Prizes, becoming the first reporter in the history of the Pulitzers to be awarded this many. In 2019, Barstow joined the faculty of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism as a professor of investigative journalism.
Mark Mazzetti is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist for the New York Times. He currently serves as a Washington Investigative Correspondent for the Times.
Matt Apuzzo is an American journalist. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for The New York Times.
Adam Goldman is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist. He received the award for covering the New York Police Department's spying program that monitored daily life in Muslim communities and for his coverage of the Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American novelist. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
Heather Ann Thompson is an American historian, author, activist, professor, and speaker from Detroit, Michigan. Thompson won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in History, the 2016 Bancroft Prize, and other awards for her work Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy.
Jonathan Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and author, and Director of the Northeastern University School of Journalism and professor of Journalism.
Robbyn Swan is an American journalist and author. Her book, The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden, co-authored by her husband Anthony Summers, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.
