Pulitzer Prize Winners 2025

The 2025 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 

Huzzah! Percival Everett was awarded the Pulitzer for his novel James - a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is my favourite book of the past twelve months and I am so pleased that he was recognised. You can read my review here. Finalists were Rita Bullwinkel (Headshot), Stacey Levine (Mice 1961) and Gayl Jones (The Unicorn Woman).

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has won for Purpose, a play about an upper middle class African-American family related to a civil rights activist. Finalists were Cole Escola for Oh, Mary! and Itamar Moses for The Ally.

The Pulitzer Prize for History

Two winners share this year's award: Edda L Fields Black for her work Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid and Black Freedom During the Civil War; and Kathleen DuVal for Native Nations: A Millennium in North America. Seth Rockman was a finalist for Plantation Good: A Material History of American Slavery.  

The Pulitzer Prize for Biography

Jason Roberts was recognised for his biography of Carl Linnaeus and George-Louis de Buffon in Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life. Finalists were David Greenberg for John Lewis: A Life and Amy Reading for The World She Edited: Katherine S White at the New Yorker.   

The Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography

Tessa Hulls won for Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir - an account of three generations of Chinese women. Finalists were Alexandra Fuller for Fi: A Memoir of My Son and Lucy Sante for I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition.

The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Marie Howe was recognised for her collection of poetry New and Selected Poems. Finalists were An Authentic Life by Jennifer Chang and Bluff: Poems by Danez Smith,

The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction

Benjamin Nathans won for To the Success of our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement - an account of how courageous Russians fought for freedom. Finalists were Rollo Romig for I am on the Hit List: A Journalist's Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India and Rachel Nolan's Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoption in Guatemala.

Want more? Watch the prize announcement on YouTube below.