Announced on April 4, this year’s Pulitzer Prizes were awarded to a diverse group. The journalism prizes went to some predictable heavyweights: the Los Angeles Times (for International Reporting and Public Service) and The Wall Street Journal (for Beat Reporting and Criticism) each won two awards, while both the Associated Press and The New York Times received awards, for Breaking News Photography and National Reporting, respectively. The prize for Investigative Reporting went to Nigel Jaquiss of Willamette Week in Portland, Ore., for uncovering the sexual liaison of Neil Goldschmidt, former governor of Oregon and mayor of Portland, with a 14-year-old girl. Cnn.com describes the Willamette Week as “an alternative news weekly,” and the award-winning story was originally published on-line.
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan won the Pulitzer for Biography. Their book de Kooning: An American Master, took ten years to complete. Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) was well known for his abstract paintings and sculptures in the 1930s-’60s, with the predominant subject being women. Amazon.com’s review describes the book as being the story of a man raised by a mom who beat him with wooden shoes, who lived on ketchup and booze, and who found a second family in New York City’s bohemian art scene. He would eventually suffer from Alzheimer’s disease as well.
Other awards went to John Patrick Shanley for his Broadway play Doubt, which cnn.com describes as a nun confronting a Roman Catholic priest with suspicions that he has molested a male student. The Pulitzer for fiction went to Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, a “poetic, modern-day tale of a dying Iowa preacher,” according to cnn.com.
Robinson is a teacher at the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop, and her Pulitzer marks the 26th awarded to a writer affiliated with that program, according to The Des Moines Register.
“It’s always a little bit surprising, working on such a private thing as a novel, when people respond to it,” said Robinson, 61, in a telephone interview with The Register. “You hope that there are readers that find what you say as meaningful.”
Pulitzer prizes are given out each April to the literary giants of the U.S for works in journalism and the humanities. There are 14 journalism prizes, including Investigative Reporting, Breaking News Reporting, and Feature Photography. Seven awards are given in the humanities, including Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry.
Joseph Pulitzer, a journalist and newspaper publisher who owned the St. Louis Dispatch, established the award in 1917.
Pulitzer used the Dispatch to “(Splash) investigative articles and editorials assailing government corruption, wealthy tax-dodgers, and gamblers,” according to www.pulitzer.org. That same site suggests that he “would have been pleased to know that in the conduct of the Pulitzer Prize system which he later established, more awards in journalism would go to exposure of corruption than to any other subject.”
A complete list of this year’s and all previous Pulitzer winners can be found at www.pulitzer.org.