The Pulitzer Prizes

Joseph Pulitzer    •    Pulitzers by year Pulitzer winners

Journalism:

Public Service Breaking News Reporting Investigative Reporting Explanatory Reporting Local Reporting National Reporting International Reporting Feature Writing Commentary Criticism Editorial Writing Editorial Cartooning Breaking News Photography Feature Photography

Letters and drama:

Biography or Autobiography Fiction Drama History Poetry General Non-Fiction

Other prizes:

Music Special Citations and Awards

The Pulitzer Prize for Music was first awarded in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer did not call for such a prize in his will, but had arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year. This was eventually converted into a full-fledged prize: "For a distinguished musical composition of significant dimension by an American that has had its first performance in the United States during the year.” Because of the requirement that the composition had its world premiere during the year of its award, the winning work had rarely been recorded and sometimes had received only one performance.^[1] In 2004 the terms were modified to read: “For a distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year.”^[2]

History[link]

In 1965, the jury voted to give the prize to Duke Ellington, but the Pulitzer Board refused to accept the ruling and chose to give no award that year. Ellington responded: "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young." (He was then sixty-seven years old.)^[3] Despite this joke, Nat Hentoff reported that when he spoke to Ellington about the subject, he was "angrier than I'd ever seen him before," and Ellington said, "I'm hardly surprised that my kind of music is still without, let us say, official honor at home. Most Americans still take it for granted that European-based music—classical music, if you will—is the only really respectable kind."^[4]

In 1996, after years of internal debate, the Pulitzer Prize board announced a change in the criteria for the music prize "so as to attract the best of a wider range of American music."^[3] The result was that the following year Wynton Marsalis became the first jazz artist to win the Pulitzer Prize. However, his victory was controversial because according to the Pulitzer guidelines, his winning work, a three hour long oratorio about slavery, "Blood on the Fields", should not have been eligible. Although a winning work was supposed to have had its first performance during that year, Marsalis' piece premiered on April 1, 1994 and its recording, released on Columbia Records, was dated 1995. Yet, the piece won the 1997 prize. Marsalis' management had submitted a "revised version" of "Blood on the Fields" which was "premiered" at Yale University after the composer made seven small changes.^[5] When asked what would make a revised work eligible, the chairman of that year's music jury, Robert Ward, said: "Not a cut here and there...or a slight revision," but rather something that changed "the whole conception of the piece." After being read the list of revisions made to the piece, Ward acknowledged that the minor changes should not have qualified it as an eligible work, but he said that "the list you had here was not available to us, and we did not discuss it."^[6]

The first woman to receive the award was Ellen Taaffe Zwilich who won in 1983. Zwilich was also the first woman to receive a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition at the Juilliard School of Music.^[7]

In 1992 the music jury, which that year consisted of George Perle, Roger Reynolds, and Harvey Sollberger, selected a piece by Ralph Shapey for the award. However, the Pulitzer Board rejected that decision and chose to give the prize to the jury's second choice, Wayne Peterson. The music jury responded with a public statement stating that they had not been consulted in that decision and that the Board was not professionally qualified to make such a decision. The Board responded that the "Pulitzers are enhanced by having, in addition to the professional's point of view, the layman's or consumer's point of view," and they did not rescind their decision.^[7]

George Walker was the first African American composer to win the Prize, which he received for his work Lilacs in 1996. Walker is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory which he entered at the age of fourteen, and graduated at eighteen with the highest honors in his Conservatory class. He was the first black graduate at the renowned Curtis Institute of Music, where he received an Artist Diplomas degree, and he was the first black recipient of a Doctoral degree at the Eastman School of Music.

In 2004, responding to criticism, Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes at the Columbia University School of Journalism, announced that they wanted to "broaden the prize a bit so that we can be more assured that we are getting the full range of the best of America's music..." Jay T. Harris, a member of the Pulitzer governing board said: "The prize should not be reserved essentially for music that comes out of the European classical tradition."^[8]

The announced rule changes included altering the jury pool to include performers and presenters, in addition to composers and critics. Entrants are now no longer required to submit a score. Recording will also be accepted, although scores are still "strongly urged." Gissler said, "The main thing is we're trying to keep this a serious prize. We're not trying to dumb it down any way shape or form, but we're trying to augment it, improve it...I think the critical term here is 'distinguished American musical compositions.'"^[9] Reaction among Pulitzer Prize in Music winners has varied.

The Pulitzer Prize Advisory Board officially announced: "After more than a year of studying the Prize, now in its 61st year, the Pulitzer Prize Board declares its strong desire to consider and honor the full range of distinguished American musical compositions—from the contemporary classical symphony to jazz, opera, choral, musical theater, movie scores and other forms of musical excellence...Through the years, the Prize has been awarded chiefly to composers of classical music and, quite properly, that has been of large importance to the arts community. However, despite some past efforts to broaden the competition, only once has the Prize gone to a jazz composition, a musical drama or a movie score. In the late 1990s, the Board took tacit note of the criticism leveled at its predecessors for failure to cite two of the country's foremost jazz composers. It bestowed a Special Citation on George Gershwin marking the 1998 centennial celebration of his birth and Duke Ellington on his 1999 centennial year. Earlier, in 1976, a Special Award was made to Scott Joplin in his centennial year. While Special Awards and Citations continue to be an important option, the Pulitzer Board believes that the Music Prize, in its own annual competition, should encompass the nation's array of distinguished music and hopes that the refinements in the Prize's definition, guidelines and jury membership will serve that end.”^[10]

Subsequently, in 2006, a posthumous "Special Citation" was given to jazz composer Thelonious Monk,^[11] and in 2007 the prize went to Ornette Coleman, a free jazz composer.

Criticism[link]

Donald Martino, the 1974 winner, said, "If you write music long enough, sooner or later, someone is going to take pity on you and give you the damn thing. It is not always the award for the best piece of the year; it has gone to whoever hasn't gotten it before."^[12]

John Corigliano, the winner in 2001, said that although the Pulitzer Prize for Music was intended to be for music that meant something to the world, it had become a very different kind of award: "by composers for composers" and "mired in a pool of rotating jurors."^[13] Indeed, in 1998, after researching the Pulitzer Prize for Music, music critic Kyle Gann wrote that the awards panel often included "the same seven names over and over as judges": Gunther Schuller, Joseph Schwantner, Jacob Druckman (now deceased), George Perle, John Harbison, Mario Davidovsky, and Bernard Rands. Gann concluded that since all of these composers are white men, and generally have same "narrow Eurocentric aesthetic" that the prize has been unfairly biased.^[14]

After winning the award in 2003, John Adams expressed "ambivalence bordering on contempt" because "most of the country's greatest musical minds" have been ignored in favor of academic music.^[5]

Concerning the 2004 changes, Gunther Schuller said, "This is a long overdue sea change in the whole attitude as to what can be considered for the prize. It is an opening up to different styles and not at all to different levels of quality." Other former winners disagreed. Stephen Hartke publicly criticized the changes, and John Harbison called them "a horrible development."

Lewis Spratlan (who won the Prize in 2000) also showed concern at this change, but not because of its incorporation of previously-neglected styles (Many of Spratlan’s own works fundamentally incorporate a variety of styles, including jazz-like idiosyncrasies.^[15][16] Rather, Spratlan protests the equation of musical songwriting and movie scoring with academic composition, believing them to be incapable of functioning as unique and influential works. He expressed his concern that equating the music of musicals and movies with the exploratory endeavors of academic composers is to pervert the prestige and original intent of the Pulitzer Prize:

“The Pulitzer is one of the very few prizes that award artistic distinction in front-edge, risk-taking music. To dilute this objective by inviting...musicals and movie scores, no matter how excellent, is to undermine the distinctiveness and capability for artistic advancement....”^[17]

The music critic Greg Sandow responded: "What's really going on here...is a last-ditch defense of the obsolete and snobbish idea that only classical music can be art...I wonder if Hartke, Harbison, and others aren't (whether they know it or not) simply trying to protect their turf, trying to preserve some distinction, some chance at prestige and momentary fame, that might elude them if the Pulitzer prize were given simply for artistic merit."^[18] The hope was that the rules changes would "level the playing field",^[19] but in 2004 Sandow reported that the Pulitzer board's nomination materials sent "a pretty clear message [that] classical works with notated scores are still our first priority."^[20]

Winners[link]

• 1943: William Schuman, Secular Cantata No. 2: A Free Song
• 1944: Howard Hanson, Symphony No. 4
• 1945: Aaron Copland, Appalachian Spring, ballet
• 1946: Leo Sowerby, The Canticle of the Sun
• 1947: Charles Ives, Symphony No. 3
• 1948: Walter Piston, Symphony No. 3
• 1949: Virgil Thomson, Louisiana Story, film score
• 1950: Gian Carlo Menotti, The Consul, opera
• 1951: Douglas Stuart Moore, Giants in the Earth, opera
• 1952: Gail Kubik, Symphony Concertante
• 1953: no prize awarded
• 1954: Quincy Porter, Concerto Concertante for two pianos and orchestra
• 1955: Gian Carlo Menotti, The Saint of Bleecker Street, opera
• 1956: Ernst Toch, Symphony No. 3
• 1957: Norman Dello Joio, Meditations on Ecclesiastes
• 1958: Samuel Barber, Vanessa, opera
• 1959: John La Montaine, Piano Concerto
• 1960: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 2
• 1961: Walter Piston, Symphony No. 7
• 1962: Robert Ward, The Crucible, opera
• 1963: Samuel Barber, Piano Concerto
• 1964: no prize awarded
• 1965: no prize awarded (See Duke Ellington)
• 1966: Leslie Bassett, Variations for Orchestra
• 1967: Leon Kirchner, Quartet No. 3 for strings and electronic tape
• 1968: George Crumb, Echoes of Time and the River
• 1969: Karel Husa, String Quartet No. 3
• 1970: Charles Wuorinen, Time's Encomium
• 1971: Mario Davidovsky, Synchronisms No. 6
• 1972: Jacob Druckman, Windows
• 1973: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 3
• 1974: Donald Martino, Notturno
• 1975: Dominick Argento, From the Diary of Virginia Woolf
• 1976: Ned Rorem, Air Music
• 1977: Richard Wernick, Visions of Terror and Wonder
• 1978: Michael Colgrass, Deja Vu for percussion and orchestra
• 1979: Joseph Schwantner, Aftertones of Infinity
• 1980: David Del Tredici, In Memory of a Summer Day
• 1981: no prize awarded
• 1982: Roger Sessions, Concerto for Orchestra
• 1983: Ellen Zwilich, Three Movements for Orchestra (Symphony No. 1)
• 1984: Bernard Rands, Canti del Sole
• 1985: Stephen Albert, Symphony RiverRun
• 1986: George Perle, Wind Quintet No. 4, for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon
• 1987: John Harbison, The Flight into Egypt
• 1988: William Bolcom, 12 New Etudes for Piano
• 1989: Roger Reynolds, Whispers Out of Time
• 1990: Mel D. Powell, Duplicates: A Concerto
• 1991: Shulamit Ran, Symphony
• 1992: Wayne Peterson, The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark
• 1993: Christopher Rouse, Trombone Concerto
• 1994: Gunther Schuller, Of Reminiscences and Reflections
• 1995: Morton Gould, Stringmusic
• 1996: George Walker, Lilacs, for soprano and orchestra
• 1997: Wynton Marsalis, Blood on the Fields, oratorio
• 1998: Aaron Jay Kernis, String Quartet No. 2, Musica Instrumentalis
• 1999: Melinda Wagner, Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion
• 2000: Lewis Spratlan, Life is a Dream, opera (awarded for concert version of Act II)
• 2001: John Corigliano, Symphony No. 2, for string orchestra
• 2002: Henry Brant, Ice Field
• 2003: John Adams, On the Transmigration of Souls
• 2004: Paul Moravec, Tempest Fantasy
• 2005: Steven Stucky, Second Concerto for Orchestra
• 2006: Yehudi Wyner, Chiavi in Mano, (piano concerto)
• 2007: Ornette Coleman, Sound Grammar
• 2008: David Lang, The Little Match Girl Passion
• 2009: Steve Reich, Double Sextet
• 2010: Jennifer Higdon, Violin Concerto
• 2011: Zhou Long, Madame White Snake, opera
• 2012: Kevin Puts, Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts

Additional citations -- 1974: Roger Sessions (1896-1985); 1976: Scott Joplin (1868-1917, posthumous); 1982: Milton Babbitt (1916–2011); 1985: William Schuman (1910-1992); 1998: George Gershwin (1898-1937, posthumous); 1999: Duke Ellington (1899-1974, posthumous); 2006: Thelonious Monk (1917-1982, posthumous); 2007: John Coltrane (1926-1967, posthumous); 2008: Bob Dylan (b. 1941); 2010: Hank Williams (1923-1953, posthumous).

References[link]

External links[link]

• Pulitzer Prize website
• The Pulitzer Prize for Music: A Sonic Gallery

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2011)

Pulitzer Prize
Awarded for	Excellence in newspaper journalism, literary achievements, and musical composition
Presented by	Columbia University
Country	United States
First awarded	1917
Official website	http://www.pulitzer.org/

The Pulitzer Prize  /ˈpʊlɨtsər/^[1] is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American (Hungarian-born) publisher Joseph Pulitzer in 1917 and is administered by Columbia University in New York City. Prizes are awarded yearly in twenty-one categories. In twenty of these, each winner receives a certificate and a US$10,000 cash award.^[2] The winner in the public service category of the journalism competition is awarded a gold medal, which always goes to a newspaper, although an individual may be named in the citation.

Entry and prize consideration[link]

The Pulitzer Prize does not automatically evaluate all applicable works in the media, but only those that have been entered with a $50 entry fee^[3] (one per desired entry category). Entries must fit in at least one of the specific prize categories, and cannot simply gain entrance on the grounds of having general literary or compositional properties.^[3] Works can also only be entered into a maximum of two prize categories, regardless of their properties.

Each year, 103 judges are selected^{[by whom?]} to "serve on 20 separate juries" for the 21 award categories (one jury for both photography awards). Most of the juries consist of five members, except for those of "public service, investigative reporting, beat reporting, feature writing and commentary categories", which have seven members.^[4] For each award category, a jury makes three nominations. The board selects the winner by majority vote from the nominations or bypass the nominations and select a different entry with a 75% majority vote. The board can also vote no award. The board gets no compensation for its work. The jurors in letters, music, and drama get a $2000 honorarium for the year, while each chair gets $2500.^[4]

The difference between entrants and nominated finalists[link]

Anyone whose work has been submitted is called an "entrant". The jury selects a small group of "nominated finalists" and announces them together with the winner for each category.

History[link]

Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer gave money in his will to Columbia University to launch a journalism school and establish the Prize. $250,000 was allocated to the prize and scholarships.^[5] He specified "four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one in education, and four traveling scholarships."^[4] After his death, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded June 4, 1917; they are now announced each April.

Recipients[link]

Individuals[link]

Recipients of multiple Pulitzer Prizes include:

• Four awards:
  • Robert Frost
  • Eugene O'Neill (two of the awards were in a four-year period)
  • Carol Guzy (for photography)
• Three awards:
  • Edwin Arlington Robinson
  • Archibald MacLeish
  • Thomas L. Friedman for International Reporting and Commentary
  • Edward Albee
  • Thorton Wilder (once in the Novel category and twice in Drama)
  • Robert Penn Warren (once for Fiction and twice for Poetry)
  • Carl Sandburg (once for Biography and twice for Poetry)
• Two awards:
  • Robert Caro for Biography
  • David McCullough
  • Robert Lowell for Poetry
  • Mike Luckovich for Editorial Cartooning
  • Gene Weingarten for Feature Writing (twice (2008 and 2010) in a three-year period)
  • Margaret Leech for History
  • August Wilson for Drama
  • Barbara W. Tuchman for General Non-Fiction
  • Norman Mailer for Fiction and Non-Fiction
  • William Faulkner
  • John Updike
  • Gian Carlo Menotti for music composition
  • Samuel Barber for music composition
  • Elliot Carter for music composition
  • Booth Tarkington for Novel (twice in a four-year period)
  • Anthony Shadid for his coverage of the Iraq War
  • Edward O. Wilson for biology.
  • Horst Faas for Photography

Newspapers[link]

The prize for Public Service is awarded to newspapers. Awards for journalism categories such as General News Reporting may be awarded to individuals or newspapers or newspaper staffs.^{[citation needed]}

Categories[link]

The Pulitzer Prizes

Joseph Pulitzer    •    Pulitzers by year Pulitzer winners

Journalism:

Public Service Breaking News Reporting Investigative Reporting Explanatory Reporting Local Reporting National Reporting International Reporting Feature Writing Commentary Criticism Editorial Writing Editorial Cartooning Breaking News Photography Feature Photography

Letters and drama:

Biography or Autobiography Fiction Drama History Poetry General Non-Fiction

Other prizes:

Music Special Citations and Awards

Awards are made in categories relating to newspaper journalism, arts, and letters and fiction. Only published reports and photographs by United States-based newspapers or daily news organizations are eligible for the journalism prize. Beginning in 2007, "an assortment of online elements will be permitted in all journalism categories except for the competition's two photography categories, which will continue to restrict entries to still images."^[6] In December 2008 it was announced that for the first time content published in online-only news sources would be considered.^[7]

The current Pulitzer Prize category definitions in the 2008 competition, in the order they are awarded, are:

• Public Service – for a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper through the use of its journalistic resources, which may include editorials, cartoons, and photographs, as well as reporting. Often thought of as the grand prize, the Public Service award is given to the newspaper, not to individuals, though individuals are often mentioned for their contributions.
• Breaking News Reporting – for a distinguished example of local reporting of breaking news.
• Investigative Reporting – for a distinguished example of investigative reporting by an individual or team, presented as a single newspaper article or series.
• Explanatory Reporting – for a distinguished example of explanatory newspaper reporting that illuminates a significant and complex subject, demonstrating mastery of the subject, lucid writing, and clear presentation.
• Local Reporting – for a distinguished example of local newspaper reporting that illuminates significant issues or concerns.^[6]
• National Reporting – for a distinguished example of newspaper reporting on national affairs.
• International Reporting – for a distinguished example of newspaper reporting on international affairs, including United Nations correspondence.
• Feature Writing – for a distinguished example of newspaper feature writing giving prime consideration to high literary quality and originality.
• Commentary – for distinguished commentary.
• Criticism – for distinguished criticism.
• Editorial Writing – for distinguished editorial writing, the test of excellence being clarity of style, moral purpose, sound reasoning, and power to influence public opinion in what the writer perceives to be the right direction.
• Editorial Cartooning – for a distinguished cartoon or portfolio of cartoons published during the year, characterized by originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of drawing, and pictorial effect.
• Breaking News Photography, previously called Spot News Photography – for a distinguished example of breaking news photography in black and white or color, which may consist of a photograph or photographs, a sequence, or an album.
• Feature Photography – for a distinguished example of feature photography in black and white or color, which may consist of a photograph or photographs, a sequence, or an album.

There are six categories in letters and drama:

• Fiction – for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.
• Drama – for a distinguished play by an American playwright, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life.
• History – for a distinguished book on the history of the United States.
• Biography or Autobiography – for a distinguished biography or autobiography by an American author.
• Poetry – for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American poet.
• General Non-Fiction – for a distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category.

There is one prize given for music:

• Pulitzer Prize for Music – for a distinguished musical contribution by an American that had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year.

There have also been a number of Special Citations and Awards.

In addition to the prizes, Pulitzer travelling fellowships are awarded to four outstanding students of the Graduate School of Journalism as selected by the faculty.

Board[link]

The 20-member board consists mostly of major newspaper editors and executives, along with six academics including the president of Columbia University and the dean and administrator of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The administrator and the dean cannot vote. The board elects its own members for a three-year term (excluding the dean and the administrator). Members of the board and the juries are selected with close attention "given to professional excellence and affiliation, as well as diversity in terms of gender, ethnic background, geographical distribution and size of newspaper." Each year, the chair rotates to the most senior member.^[8] The board makes all prize decisions.^[4]

The 2011–2012 board members were:^[9]

• Danielle Allen, UPS Foundation Professor, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
• Jim Amoss, Editor, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, LA (Co-chair)
• Randell Beck, President and Publisher, Argus Leader Media, Sioux Falls, SD
• Robert Blau, Managing Editor for projects and investigations, Bloomberg News, New York, NY
• Lee Bollinger, President, Columbia University, New York, NY
• Kathleen Carroll, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President, Associated Press (Co-chair)
• Joyce Dehli, Vice President for News, Lee Enterprises
• Junot Díaz, Author and Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Thomas Friedman, Columnist, The New York Times, New York, NY
• Paul Gigot, Editorial Page Editor, The Wall Street Journal, New York, NY
• Sig Gissler, Administrator, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, New York, NY
• Steven Hahn, Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
• Nicholas Lemann, Dean, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, New York, NY
• Ann Marie Lipinski, Curator, Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (Co-chair)
• Gregory Moore, Editor, The Denver Post, Denver, CO
• Eugene Robinson, Columnist and Associate Editor, The Washington Post
• Margaret Sullivan, Editor, The Buffalo News, Buffalo, NY
• Paul Tash, Chairman and CEO, Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, FL
• Jim VandeHei, Executive Editor and Co-founder, Politico
• Keven Ann Willey, Vice President/Editorial Page Editor, The Dallas Morning News

Discontinued awards[link]

Over the years, awards have been discontinued either because the field of the award has been expanded to encompass other areas, the award been renamed because the common terminology changed, or the award has become obsolete, such as the prizes for telegraphic reporting, which was based on the old technology of the telegram.

An example of a writing field that has been expanded was the former Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which has been changed to the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which also includes short stories, novellas, novelettes, and fictional poetry, as well as novels.

To find, for example, all the winners for investigative reporting, you have to also look back at the prize for local investigative specialized reporting, which previously was the prize for local reporting, no edition time.

Discontinued or merged categories include:

• Pulitzer Prize for Reporting, 1917–1947.
• Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence, 1929–1947.
• Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism, became the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.
• Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting, 1985–1990, became the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.
• Pulitzer Prize for Local General or Spot News Reporting, 1964–1984, became the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.
• Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting, 1964–1984, became the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
• Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, Edition Time, 1953–1963, became the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.
• Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, No Edition Time, 1953–1963, became the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
• Pulitzer Prize for Photography, was divided in 1968 into Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography and a spot news category, which became the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography.
• Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting, 1991–1997, became the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.
• Pulitzer Prize for Telegraphic Reporting - International, became the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
• Pulitzer Prize for Telegraphic Reporting - National, became the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.
• Pulitzer Prize for Specialized Reporting 1985–1990, became the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting.
• Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting, 1991–2006; replaced by the reinstituted Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting^[6]
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, became the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Brief chronology of renamings, splittings, and introductions[link]

1917: + Biography or Autobiography; + History; + Editorial Writing; + Reporting

1918: + Novel; + Drama; + Public Service

1922: + Poetry; + Editorial Cartooning

1929: + Correspondence

1942: + Photography; + Telegraphic Reporting—National; + Telegraphic Reporting—International

1943: + Music

1948: − Correspondence; − Novel + Fiction; − Reporting + Local reporting; − Telegraphic Reporting—National + National Reporting; − Telegraphic Reporting—International + International Reporting

1953: − Local reporting + Local Reporting, Edition Time; + Local Reporting, No Edition Time

1962: + General Non-Fiction

1964: − Local Reporting, Edition Time + Local General or Spot News Reporting; − Local Reporting, No Edition Time + Local Investigative Specialized Reporting

1968: − Photography; + Feature Photography; + Spot News Photography

1970: + Commentary; + Criticism

1979: + Feature Writing

1985: − Local General or Spot News Reporting + General News Reporting; − Local Investigative Specialized Reporting; + Investigative Reporting; + Specialized Reporting; + Explanatory Journalism

1991: − General News Reporting + Spot News Reporting; − Specialized Reporting + Beat Reporting

1998: − Spot News Reporting + Breaking News Reporting; − Explanatory Journalism + Explanatory Reporting

2000: − Spot News Photography + Breaking News Photography

2007: − Beat Reporting + Local reporting

Controversies[link]

• Calls for revocation of journalist Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize
• Call for revocation of journalist William L. Laurence's 1946 Pulitzer Prize
• 1962 Biography Prize: Citizen Hearst: A Biography of William Randolph Hearst by W. A. Swanberg was recommended by the Prize board but overturned by the trustees of Columbia University because its subject, Hearst, was not an "eminent example of the biographer's art as specified in the prize definition".^[10]
• 1974 Fiction Prize: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon was recommended by the three-member fiction panel but the eleven other members of the Prize board overturned that decision and no award was given.^[11]
• Forfeiture of Janet Cooke's 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for fabricating the story.

Criticism[link]

Some critics of the Pulitzer Prize have accused the organization of favoring those who support liberal causes or oppose conservative causes. Syndicated columnist L. Brent Bozell said that the Pulitzer Prize has a "liberal legacy", particularly in its prize for commentary.^[12] He pointed to a 31-year period in which only five conservatives won prizes for commentary. The claim is also supported by a statement from the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary, Kathleen Parker: "It's only because I'm a conservative basher that I'm now recognized."^[13]

See also[link]

• List of Pulitzer Prizes awarded to The New York Times
• National Magazine Awards

References[link]

• Auxier, George W. (March 1940). "Middle Western Newspapers and the Spanish American War, 1895–1898". Mississippi Valley Historical Review (Organization of American Historians) 26 (4): 523. DOI:10.2307/1896320. JSTOR 1896320. 

External links[link]

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• Official website

Jennifer Egan
Egan at Occupy Wall Street, November 2011
Born	(1962-09-06) September 6, 1962 (age 49) Chicago, Illinois
Occupation	Novelist
Citizenship	United States
Genres	Fiction, Novel, Short story
Notable work(s)	Look at Me (novel, 2001), A Visit From the Goon Squad (novel, 2010)
Notable award(s)	National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, National Book Critics Circle Award
www.jenniferegan.com

Jennifer Egan (born September 6, 1962) is an American novelist and short story writer who lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Egan's novel A Visit From the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.

Background and career[link]

She was raised in San Francisco. After she graduated from Lowell High School, Egan majored in English literature at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by two years at St John's College, Cambridge supported by a Thouron Award.^[1][2] She has published short fiction in The New Yorker, Harper's, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Ploughshares,^[3] among others, and her journalism appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine. She has published one short story collection and four novels, among which Look at Me was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001.

Egan has been hesitant to classify A Visit from the Goon Squad as either a novel or a short story collection. Speaking about A Visit from the Goon Squad's genre, Egan said, "I wanted to avoid centrality. I wanted polyphony. I wanted a lateral feeling, not a forward feeling. My ground rules were: every piece has to be very different, from a different point of view. I actually tried to break that rule later; if you make a rule then you also should break it!" The book features genre-bending content such as a chapter entirely formatted as a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. When discussing her inspiration and approach to the work, she said, "I don’t experience time as linear. I experience it in layers that seem to coexist…One thing that facilitates that kind of time travel is music, which is why I think music ended up being such an important part of the book. Also, I was reading Proust. He tries, very successfully in some ways, to capture the sense of time passing, the quality of consciousness, and the ways to get around linearity, which is the weird scourge of writing prose." ^[4]

Awards[link]

Egan at the 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival

Egan received a Thouron Award in 1986.^[5] She was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996,^[6] and was a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library in 2004-05.^[7] In 2011 she was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.^[8]

Egan won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award (Fiction)^[9] and a Pulitzer Prize for A Visit From the Goon Squad.^[10]

Works[link]

• Emerald City (short story collection) (1993, UK; released in US in 1996)
• The Invisible Circus (novel) (1995)
• Look at Me (novel) (2001)
• The Keep (novel) (2006)
• A Visit From the Goon Squad (novel) (2010)
• Black Box (short story) (2012)

Reviews[link]

Reviewing The Keep, The New York Times: Jennifer Egan is a refreshingly unclassifiable novelist; she deploys most of the arsenal developed by metafiction writers of the 1960s and refined by more recent authors like William T. Vollmann and David Foster Wallace — but she can’t exactly be counted as one of them. The opening of her novel, The Keep, lays out a whole Escherian architecture, replete with metafictional trapdoors, pitfalls, infinitely receding reflections and trompe l’œil effects, but what’s more immediately striking about this book is its unusually vivid and convincing realism.^[11]

See also[link]

• Mac Aodhagáin

References[link]

External links[link]

• Jennifer Egan's website
• Reviews & Scores for The Keep at Metacritic.com
• Book Review at Boldtype.com
• "The Ghost in the Renovation" at This Old House website
• Reading report from Happy Endings with Peter Behrens and David Rakoff, published at bookishlove.net (Nov 2006)
• 2010 BOMB Magazine interview of Jennifer Egan by Heidi Julavitz

Kay Ryan
Born	(1945-09-21) September 21, 1945 (age 66) San Jose, California, USA
Occupation	Poet, Educator
Nationality	American
Period	1970s-present
Genres	Poetry
Notable work(s)	The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (2010)
Notable award(s)	Guggenheim Fellowship (2004) Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2004) United States Poet Laureate (2008-2010) Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2011) MacArthur Fellowship (2011)
Partner(s)	Carol Adair (1978-2009†)
Influences Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost

Kay Ryan (born September 21, 1945) is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. Ryan was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate,^[1] from 2008 to 2010. She was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow.^[2]

Biography[link]

Ryan was born in San Jose, California, and was raised in several areas of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert.^[3] After attending Antelope Valley College, she received bachelor's and master's degrees in English from University of California, Los Angeles.^[4] Since 1971, she has lived in Marin County, California, and has taught English part-time at the College of Marin in Kentfield.^[5] Carol Adair, who was also an instructor at the College of Marin, was Ryan's partner from 1978 until Adair's death in 2009.^[6][7]

Her first collection, Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends, was privately published in 1983 with the help of friends.^[8] While she found a commercial publisher for her second collection, Strangely Marked Metal (1985), her work went nearly unrecognized until the mid 1990s, when some of her poems were anthologized and the first reviews in national journals were published.^[9] She became widely recognized following her receipt of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2004, and published her sixth collection of poetry, The Niagara River, in 2005.

In July 2008, the U.S. Library of Congress announced that Ryan would be the sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress for a one-year term commencing in Autumn 2008. She succeeded Charles Simic.^[1] In April 2009, the Library announced that Ryan would serve a second one-year term extending through May 2010.^[10] She was succeeded by W.S. Merwin in June 2010.^[11]

She lives in Fairfax, in Marin County, CA.

Poetry[link]

The Poetry Foundation's website has characterized Ryan's poems as follows: "Like Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore before her, Ryan delights in quirks of logic and language and teases poetry out of the most unlikely places. She regards the 'rehabilitation of clichés,' for instance, as part of the poet’s mission. Characterized by subtle, surprising rhymes and nimble rhythms, her compact poems are charged with sly wit and off-beat wisdom." J. D. McClatchy included Ryan in his 2003 anthology of contemporary American poetry.^[12] He wrote in his introduction, "Her poems are compact, exhilarating, strange affairs, like Satie miniatures or Cornell boxes. ... There are poets who start with lived life, still damp with sorrow or uncertainty, and lead it towards ideas about life. And there are poets who begin with ideas and draw life in towards their speculations. Marianne Moore and May Swenson were this latter sort of artist; so is Kay Ryan."^[12]

Ryan's poems are often quite short. In one of the first essays on Ryan, Dana Gioia wrote about this aspect of her poetry. "Ryan reminds us of the suggestive power of poetry–how it elicits and rewards the reader’s intellect, imagination, and emotions. I like to think that Ryan’s magnificently compressed poetry – along with the emergence of other new masters of the short poem like Timothy Murphy and H.L. Hix and the veteran maestri like Ted Kooser and Dick Davis – signals a return to concision and intensity."^[9]

Many reviewers have noted an affinity between Ryan's poetry and Marianne Moore's.^[13]

In addition to the oft-remarked affinity with Moore, affinities with poets May Swenson, Stevie Smith, Emily Dickinson, Wendy Cope, and Amy Clampitt have been noted by some critics. Thus Katha Pollitt wrote that Ryan's fourth collection, Elephant Rocks (1997), is "Stevie Smith rewritten by William Blake" but that Say Uncle (2000) "is like a poetical offspring of George Herbert and the British comic poet Wendy Cope."^[14] Another reviewer of Say Uncle (2000) wrote of Ryan, "Her casual manner and nods to the wisdom tradition might endear her to fans of A. R. Ammons or link her distantly to Emily Dickinson. But her tight structures, odd rhymes and ethical judgments place her more firmly in the tradition of Marianne Moore and, latterly, Amy Clampitt."^[15]

Ryan's wit, quirkiness, and slyness are often noted by reviewers of her poetry, but Jack Foley emphasizes her essential seriousness. In his review of Say Uncle he writes, "There is, in short, far more darkness than 'light' in this brilliant, limited volume. Kay Ryan is a serious poet writing serious poems, and she resides on a serious planet (a word she rhymes with 'had it'). Ryan can certainly be funny, but it is rarely without a sting."^[16] Some of these disjoint qualities in her work are illustrated by her poem "Outsider Art", which Harold Bloom selected for the anthology The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997.

Ryan is also known for her extensive use of internal rhyme. She refers to her specific methods of using internal rhyme as "recombinant rhyme." She claims that she had a hard time "tak[ing] end-rhyme seriously," and uses recombinant rhyme to bring structure and form to her work. As for other types of form, Ryan claims that she cannot use them, stating that it is "like wearing the wrong clothes."^[17]

Honors and awards[link]

Ryan's awards include a 1995 award from the Ingram Merrill Foundation,^[1] the 2000 Union League Poetry Prize,^[18] the 2001 Maurice English Poetry Award, a fellowship in 2001 from the National Endowment for the Arts,^[19] a 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2004 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her poems have been included in three Pushcart Prize anthologies,^[20][21][22] and have been selected four times for The Best American Poetry;^[23][24][25] "Outsider Art" was selected by Harold Bloom for The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997. Since 2006, Ryan has served as one of fourteen Chancellors of The Academy of American Poets.^[26] On January 22, 2011, Ryan was listed as a finalist for the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award; on April 18, 2011, Ryan won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, for her collection The Best of It: New and Selected Poems.^{[27][28][29][30]}

On September 20th, 2011, Ryan was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation MacArthur Fellows Program 'genius grant.' ^[31]

Poetry collections[link]

• 1983: Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends, 64 pages, Fairfax, California: Taylor Street Press, ISBN 0911407006
• 1985: Strangely Marked Metal, 50 pages, Providence, Rhode Island: Copper Beech Press, ISBN 0914278460
• 1994: Flamingo Watching, 63 pages, Providence, Rhode Island: Copper Beech Press, ISBN 0914278649
• 1996: Elephant Rocks, 84 pages, New York: Grove Press, ISBN 0802115861
• 2000: Say Uncle, New York: Grove Press, 80 pages, ISBN 0802137172
• 2005: The Niagara River, 72 pages, New York: Grove Press, ISBN 0802142222
• 2008: Jam Jar Lifeboat & Other Novelties Exposed, illustrated by Carl Dern. 40 pages, Red Berry Editions, ISBN 9780981578118
• 2010: The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, Grove Press, ISBN 978-0802119148

References[link]

External links[link]

• "Kay Ryan: Online Resources". The Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ryan/. Retrieved 2008-07-21. 
• Profile and poems of Kay Ryan at the Poetry Foundation.
• Sarah Fay (Winter 2008). "Kay Ryan, The Art of Poetry No. 94". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5889/the-art-of-poetry-no-94-kay-ryan. 
• Audio: Kay Ryan reading at the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar (29:52)
• Review of The Best of It by Dwight Garner in The New York Times.
• Essay by Dana Gioia "Discovering Kay Ryan". First published in The Dark Horse journal (No. 7, Winter 1998-99).