The Pulitzer Prize is an award administered by Columbia University 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. As of 2023, prizes are awarded annually in twenty-three categories. In twenty-two 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.
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
Edward Franklin Albee III was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified and named the Theater of the Absurd. Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.
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.
The Pulitzer Prize for History, administered by Columbia University, 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 book about the history of the United States. 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. The Pulitzer Prize program has also recognized some historical work with its Biography prize, from 1917, and its General Non-Fiction prize, from 1962.
The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted into a prize: "For a distinguished musical composition of significant dimension by an American that has had its first performance in the United States during the year."
The Pulitzer Prize jury has the option of awarding special citations and awards where they consider necessary.
Joseph Pulitzer III was an American newspaperman and publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 38 years. A grandson of the famous newsman Joseph Pulitzer, for 31 years he chaired the board which was responsible for awarding the Pulitzer Prize, and from 1955 to 1993 was chairman of the Pulitzer Publishing Company.
Middlesex is a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides published in 2002. The book is a bestseller, with more than four million copies sold since its publication. Its characters and events are loosely based on aspects of Eugenides' life and observations of his Greek heritage. It is not an autobiography; unlike the protagonist, Eugenides is not intersex. The author decided to write Middlesex after reading the 1980 memoir Herculine Barbin and finding himself dissatisfied with its discussion of intersex anatomy and emotions.
Denis Hale Johnson was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He is perhaps best known for his debut short story collection, Jesus' Son (1992). His most successful novel, Tree of Smoke (2007), won the National Book Award for Fiction. Johnson was twice shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Altogether, Johnson was the author of nine novels, one novella, two books of short stories, three collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and one book of reportage. His final work, a book of short stories titled The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, was published posthumously in 2018.
The Last Hunt is a 1956 American western film directed by Richard Brooks and starring Robert Taylor and Stewart Granger, with Lloyd Nolan, Debra Paget and Russ Tamblyn. It was produced by Dore Schary at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay was by Richard Brooks from the novel The Last Hunt, by Milton Lott. The music score was by Daniele Amfitheatrof and the cinematography by Russell Harlan.
Navarre Scott Momaday is a Kiowa novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. His novel House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, and is considered the first major work of the Native American Renaissance. His follow-up work The Way to Rainy Mountain blends folklore with memoir. Momaday received the National Medal of Arts in 2007 for his work's celebration and preservation of indigenous oral and art tradition. He holds 20 honorary degrees from colleges and universities and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Adam Rapp is an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, musician and film director. His play Red Light Winter was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2006.
fThe following are the Pulitzer Prizes for 1976.
Héctor Tobar is a Los Angeles author, novelist, and journalist, whose work examines the evolving and interdependent relationship between Latin America, Latino immigrants, and the United States. In 2023 he was named a Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction.
Milton Lott was an author of western novels. He grew up in the Snake River Valley, in Idaho and attended University of California, Berkeley. While there he started writing his first published novel, The Last Hunt. He worked on the novel while attending an English class taught by George R. Stewart, himself a well published author. Lott received a citation from the National Institute of Letters and Arts for The Last Hunt, and was granted a Literacy Fellowship Award by Houghton Mifflin to finish the book. The Last Hunt was selected by the Pulitzer fiction jury for the 1955 Pulitzer Prize, but John Hohenberg convinced the Pulitzer board that William Faulkner was long overdue for the award, despite his submitted novel A Fable being a lesser work of his, and the board overrode the jury's selection, much to the disgust of its members. The Last Hunt was made into a 1957 movie.
Brian Yorkey is an American playwright and lyricist. His works often explore dark and controversial subject matter such as mental illness, grief, the underbelly of suburbia, and ethics in both psychiatry and public education.
The 2012 Pulitzer Prizes were awarded on April 16, 2012, by the Pulitzer Prize Board for work during the 2011 calendar year. The deadline for submitting entries was January 25, 2012. For the first time, all entries for journalism were required to be submitted electronically. In addition, the criteria for the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting has been revised to focus on real-time reporting of breaking news. For the eleventh time in Pulitzer's history, no book received the Fiction Prize.
Ezra George Thiem was an American journalist, an investigative reporter whose work was rewarded twice with the annual Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He then became a politician who served in the Illinois state legislature.
John Hohenberg was an American journalist and academic. During his journalism career from the 1920s to 1950s, Hohenberg primarily worked at the New York Evening Post and New York Journal-American. After gaining prominence as a foreign correspondent and early United Nations reporter, he began teaching at Columbia University in 1948, ultimately serving as a tenured full professor at the institution's Graduate School of Journalism from 1950 to 1974. From 1954 onward, he served concurrently as the first administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, retaining this position for two additional years at the request of the Pulitzer Board after taking emeritus status. In 1976, he received a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation upon retiring from his administrative role.
