Pulitzer Prize Winners 2023

The Pulitzer Prize Winners have been announced with awards for Journalism and Books, Drama and Music. Let's take a look at the book award winners and finalists.

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 

The prize was shared this year with Hernan Diaz' novel Trust and Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead recognised. Trust was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. Demon Copperhead is currently in the running for the 2023 Women's Prize.  Vauhini Vara was a finalist for The Immortal King Rao.

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Sanaz Toossi has won for English, a play about four Iranian adults preparing for an English language exam in Tehran. Finalists were Aleshea Harris for On Sugarland and Lloyd Suh for The Far Country. 

The Pulitzer Prize for History

Jefferson Cowie won for Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power a look at the evolution of white supremacy in an Alabama County in the 19th and 20th centuries. Finalists were Michael John Witten for Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America and Garrett M Graff for Watergate: A New History.

The Pulitzer Prize for Biography

Beverly Gage was recognised for her biography G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, about the infamous FBI Director. Finalists were His Name is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa and Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century by Jennifer Homans.

The Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography

New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu won for his memoir Stay True, about friendship and grief. Finalists were Chloé Cooper Jones for Easy Beauty: A Memoir and Ingrid Rojas Contreras for The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir.

The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Prolific poet Carl Phillips was recognised for his collection of poetry Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020. Finalists were Blood Snow by Inuit author dg nanouk okpik and Still Life by the late Jay Hopler, 

The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction

Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa won for His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice.  Finalists were Jing Tau for Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern, David George Haskell for Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, and Linda Villarosa for Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation.

While I am not writing here about the Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism, I do want to give a shout out to Canadian journalist Connie Walker for winning a Pulitzer for her podcast Stolen: Surviving St Michael's about the Saskatchewan residential school.  You can read more about her achievements here.