This year’s Pulitzer winners include Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See
The 99th Pulitzer Prizes were awarded Monday, with The New York Times dominating in the journalism awards category and the fiction award going to Anthony Doerr’s All The Lights We Cannot See, a novel focusing on World War II. The jury called it “an imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors of World War II and written in short, elegant chapters that explore human nature and the contradictory power of technology.”
The Pulitzer for poetry went to Digest by Gregory Pardlo, drama to Between Riverside And Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis, and biography to The Pope And Mussolini: The Secret History Of Pius XI And The Rise Of Fascism In Europe by David I. Kertzer. The jury called the last “an engrossing dual biography that uses recently opened Vatican archives to shed light on two men who exercised nearly absolute power over their realms.”
On the journalism side, the relatively small Post And Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, won the Public Service Pulitzer, the most prestigious of all the Pulitzers. The paper’s Till Death Do Us Part series investigates domestic violence, and the subhead reads: “More than 300 women have been shot, stabbed, strangled, beaten, bludgeoned or burned to death by men in South Carolina over the past decade, dying at a rate of one every 12 days while the state does little to stem the carnage from domestic abuse.”
The New York Times won in the international reporting, feature photography, and investigative reporting categories. The investigative piece “showed how the influence of lobbyists can sway congressional leaders and state attorneys general, slanting justice toward the wealthy and connected.” The Wall Street Journal also won the investigative reporting Pulitzer for Medicare Unmasked, “a pioneering project that gave Americans unprecedented access to previously confidential data on the motivations and practices of their health care providers.”
The Pulitzer Prize is among the highest awards given in journalism and the arts. The full list of winners is below.
Journalism:
- Public Service: The Post And Courier of Charleston, South Carolina for chronicling domestic violence in the series Till Death Do Us Part.
- Breaking News Reporting: The Seattle Times Staff for its digital coverage of the Oso landslide and follow-up reporting.
- Investigative Reporting (Two Prizes): Eric Lipton of The New York Times for detailing lobbyist corruption in “Courting Favor” and The Wall Street Journal Staff for its interactive database of Medicare payments.
- Explanatory Reporting: Zachary R. Mider of Bloomberg News for his series explaining how U.S. corporations avoid paying taxes.
- Local Reporting: Rob Kuznia, Rebecca Kimitch, and Frank Suraci of the Daily Breeze in Torrance, California, for their reporting on corruption in a school district.
- National Reporting: Carol D. Leonnig of The Washington Post for a series of stories on the Secret Service security lapses.
- International Reporting: The New York Times Staff for its reporting on Ebola in Africa.
- Feature Writing: Diana Marcum of the Los Angeles Times for her work covering the California drought.
- Commentary: Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle for her series about grand jury abuses.
- Criticism: Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times.
- Editorial Writing: Kathleen Kingsbury of The Boston Globe for her series on restaurant workers’ income inequality.
- Editorial Cartooning: Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News.
- Breaking News Photography: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Photography Staff for its “powerful images of the despair and anger” in Ferguson, Missouri.
- Feature Photography: Daniel Berehulak, freelance photographer (for The New York Times) for his photos of the Ebola crisis in Africa.
Books, Drama, And Music:
- Fiction: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
- Drama: Between Riverside And Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis
- History: Encounters At The Heart Of The World: A History Of The Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn (Hill and Wang)
- Biography: The Pope And Mussolini: The Secret History Of Pius XI And The Rise Of Fascism In Europe by David I. Kertzer (Random House)
- Poetry: Digest by Gregory Pardlo (Four Way Books)
- General Nonfiction: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert (Henry Holt)
- Music: Anthracite Fields by Julia Wolfe (G. Schirmer, Inc.)