Considered one of the most prestigious literary prizes in America, this year’s winners for the lauded Pulitzer Prize have been announced.
The Pulitzer Prize covers an awe-inspiring 22 categories, from nonfiction all the way to poetry, and this year’s winners and nominated authors make for a stand-out list.
This year, Public Service Award and Gold Medal went to the Washington Post for its impressive and vigorous account of the attack on Washington’s ‘storm the capitol’ on January 6, 2021, giving the public a complete and clear understanding of one of the countries darkest days.
Playwright James Ijames’s comedy-drama Fat Ham (pictured above) won the best prize for Drama, just days before the acclaimed play of the same name is to make its New York debut at the Public Theater Off-Broadway. Loosely based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Fat Ham is set in America’s deep south and tackles themes of identity, kinship, responsibility, and honesty.
Joshua Cohen took out this year’s best fiction, for The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, The Netanyahus investigates the identity, and politics of the Jewish/American experience entwined in a deftly laid out plot.
Dianne Suess’s Frank: Sonnets, took home the best poetry prize for her impeccable collection of sonnets that creatively and uniquely shine a light on the contradictions of contemporary America, particularly the beauty and the difficulty of working-class life in the Rust Belt. Suess eloquently explains “The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without”
You can catch the cute moment The Washington Post won the Prize below.
The moment @washingtonpost won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for coverage of Jan. 6. pic.twitter.com/x8M124hKkY
— Micah Gelman (@mbgelman) May 9, 2022
For a full list of the prize check out Pulitzer’s official list of winners here
