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The winners of the Pulitzer Prizes were announced at the Columbia University, which included The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Pro Publica in the journalism categories, and Jayne Anne Phillips, Tyshawn Sorey, and Eboni Booth in the arts categories.
The Pulitzers honoured the best in journalism from 2023, and also in arts categories focused on books, music and theatre. All winners, barring the public service winner who receives a gold medal, will receive $15,000.
Jayne Anne Phillips' Night Watch, a mother-daughter saga set in a West Virginia asylum after the Civil War, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
The drama prize was awarded to Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust, about a bookstore worker's unexpected journey after he loses his job.
Nathan Thrall's A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy won for general nonfiction, and Jacqueline Jones received the history prize for No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era.
Two winners were announced Monday in the biography category: Jonathan Eig for his Martin Luther King biography King and Ilyon Woo's Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom. Cristina Rivera Garza's investigation into the murder of her sister, Liliana’s Invincible Summer, won for memoir-autobiography, while Brandon Som's Tripas received the poetry prize.
Tyshawn Sorey's saxophone concerto “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith)" was the winner for music.
The Associated Press won the feature photography prize for its coverage of global migration through Latin America to the US.
The prestigious public service award went to ProPublica reporters Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Alex Mierjeski and Kirsten Berg, for their work that “pierced the thick wall of secrecy” around the US supreme court showing how billionaires won judges’ favours with gifts and travel, and prompted the Supreme Court to adopt its first code of conduct.
Late hiphop critic Greg Tate, along with several other journalists and writers covering the war in Gaza, received special citations.
The New York Times won a Pulitzer for its “wide-ranging and revelatory coverage” of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, the intelligence failures that led to the attack, and Israel’s response in Gaza.
The award comes despite major criticism and controversy over NYT’s coverage of the war in Gaza.The Intercept reported in April that an internal memo instructed journalists covering Israel’s war in Gaza to “restrict the use of the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ and to ‘avoid’ using the phrase ‘occupied territory’ when describing Palestinian land”.
Also in March, a group of nearly 60 journalism professors called on NYT to address questions on a story – that was not submitted for Pulitzer consideration – that alleged Hamas carried out a “pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women” on the 7 October attack.
“Issuing guidance like this to ensure accuracy, consistency and nuance in how we cover the news is standard practice,” said Charlie Stadtlander, an NYT spokesperson. “Across all our reporting, including complex events like this, we take care to ensure our language choices are sensitive, current and clear to our audiences.”
In addition, NYT’s Hannah Dreier won the prize in investigative reporting for her coverage of migrant child labour across the US.
Contributing writer Katie Engelhart won the third Pulitzer for NYT, in feature writing, for her portrait of a family struggling with a matriarch’s dementia.
The Washington Post staff won the prize for national reporting for its “sobering examination” of the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. WaPo’s David E Hoffman won in editorial writing for a “compelling and well-researched” series on authoritarian regimes suppressing dissent in the digital era. Its third award went to contributor Vladimir Kara-Murza for commentaries written from a Russian prison cell.
The second national reporting award went to the Reutersstaff for an “eye-opening” series that looked into tech mogul Elon Musk’s automobile and aerospace businesses.
Reutersalso won the prize for for Breaking News Photography, for “raw and urgent photographs documenting the 7 October deadly attack in Israel by Hamas and the first weeks of Israel's devastating assault on Gaza”.
The New Yorker magazine won two Pulitzers – Sarah Stillman in explanatory reporting for her coverage of the legal system’s reliance on felony murder charges, and contributor Medar de la Cruz won in illustrated reporting and commentary for his story on the inmates in New York City’s Rikers Island jail.
The prize for criticism went to The Los Angeles Times’s Justin Chang for his “richly evocative and genre-spanning” work “that reflects on the contemporary moviegoing experience”.
