The 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners are here.
Percival Everett won the award for fiction for his novel James, a powerful re-imagination of Huckleberry Finn told from the perspective of Jim, Huck's enslaved companion on the raft ride.
Another notable winner was Ann Telnaes, a former Washington Post cartoonist who resigned earlier this year after her editor rejected a cartoon she created to mock media and tech leaders' deference to President Donald Trump.
And multiple journalists were recognized this year for coverage of the fentanyl crisis, among other awards for excellence in reporting and criticism.
The prestigious Pulitzer Prize honors American achievements in journalism, books, drama and music.
More than 2,500 entries are submitted annually across 23 categories in a year-long process that culminates in the spring. For the 15 awards in journalism, over 80 esteemed editors, publishers, writers, and educators judge the entries.
On Monday, Pulitzer Prizes administrator Marjorie Miller began the ceremony by acknowledging the difficulties for the media and publishers in the United States.
" Atop years of severe financial pressures and layoffs, amid the dangers of covering wars and natural disasters, journalists and writers now face additional threats in the form of legal harassment, the banning of books, and attacks on their work and legitimacy. These efforts are meant to silence, criticism, to edit or rewrite history," Miller said.
She added that this year's finalists and winners entailed " courageous reporting and impactful storytelling" as well as " authors and composers who stand up for their values."
Prizes in Journalism
Public Service
"Awarded to ProPublica for urgent reporting by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, Cassandra Jaramillo and Stacy Kranitz about pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague "life of the mother" exceptions in states with strict abortion laws."
Breaking News Reporting
"Awarded to the staff of The Washington Post for urgent and illuminating coverage of the July 13 attempt to assassinate then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, including detailed story-telling and sharp analysis that coupled traditional police reporting with audio and visual forensics."
Investigative Reporting
"Awarded to the staff of Reuters for a boldly reported exposé of lax regulation in the U.S. and abroad that makes fentanyl, one of the world's deadliest drugs, inexpensive and widely available to users in the United States."
Explanatory Reporting
"Awarded to Azam Ahmed and Christina Goldbaum of The New York Times and Matthieu Aikins, contributing writer, for an authoritative examination of how the United States sowed the seeds of its own failure in Afghanistan, primarily by supporting murderous militia that drove civilians to the Taliban."
Local Reporting
"Awarded to Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme and Jessica Gallagher of The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times for a compassionate investigative series that captured the breathtaking dimensions of Baltimore's fentanyl crisis and its disproportionate impact on older Black men, creating a sophisticated statistical model that The Banner shared with other newsrooms."
National Reporting
"Awarded to the staff of The Wall Street Journal for chronicling political and personal shifts of the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, including his turn to conservative politics, his use of legal and illegal drugs and his private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin."
International Reporting
"Awarded to Declan Walsh and the staff of The New York Times for their revelatory investigation of the conflict in Sudan, including reporting on foreign influence and the lucrative gold trade fueling it, and chilling forensic accounts of the Sudanese forces responsible for atrocities and famine."
Feature Writing
"Awarded to Mark Warren, contributor, Esquire for a sensitive portrait of a Baptist pastor and small town mayor who died by suicide after his secret digital life was exposed by a right-wing news site."
Commentary
"Awarded to Mosab Abu Toha, contributor, The New Yorker for essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel."
Criticism
"Awarded to Alexandra Lange, contributing writer, Bloomberg CityLab for graceful and genre-expanding writing about public spaces for families, deftly using interviews, observations and analysis to consider the architectural components that allow children and communities to thrive."
Editorial Writing
"Awarded to Raj Mankad, Sharon Steinmann, Lisa Falkenberg and Leah Binkovitz of the Houston Chronicle for a powerful series on dangerous train crossings that kept a rigorous focus on the people and communities at risk as the newspaper demanded urgent action."
Illustrated Reporting and Commentary
"Awarded to Ann Telnaes of The Washington Post for delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years."
Breaking News Photography
"Awarded to Doug Mills of The New York Times for a sequence of photos of the attempted assassination of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, including one image that captures a bullet whizzing through the air as he speaks."
Feature Photography
"Awarded to Moises Saman, contributor, The New Yorker for his haunting black and white images of Sednaya prison in Syria that capture the traumatic legacy of Assad's torture chambers, forcing viewers to confront the raw horrors faced by prisoners and contemplate the scars on society."
Audio Reporting
"Awarded to the Staff of The New Yorker for their "In the Dark" podcast, a combination of compelling storytelling and relentless reporting in the face of obstacles from the U.S. military, a four-year investigation into one of the most high-profile crimes of the Iraq War–the murder of 25 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha."
Letters and Drama Prizes
Fiction
"Awarded to James by Percival Everett (Doubleday), an accomplished reconsideration of Huckleberry Finn that gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom.
Drama
"Awarded to Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a play about the complex dynamics and legacy of an upper middle class African-American family whose patriarch was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, a skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage."
History
"Awarded to Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal (Random House), a panoramic portrait of Native American nations and communities over a thousand years, a vivid and accessible account of their endurance, ingenuity and achievement in the face of conflict and dispossession."
"Combee: Harriet Tubman, The Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black (Oxford University Press), a richly-textured and revelatory account of a slave rebellion that brought 756 enslaved people to freedom in a single day, weaving military strategy and family history with the transition from bondage to freedom."
Biography
"Awarded to Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts (Random House), a beautifully written double biography of Carl Linnaeus and Georges-Louis deBuffon, 18th century contemporaries who devoted their lives to identifying and describing nature's secrets, and who continue to influence how we understand the world."
Memoir or Autobiography
"Awarded to Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls (MCD Books/FSG), an affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women — the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories."
Poetry
"Awarded to New and Selected Poems by Marie Howe (W.W. Norton), a collection drawn from decades of work that mines the quotidian modern experience for evidence of our shared loneliness, mortality and holiness."
General Nonfiction
"Awarded to To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans (Princeton University Press), a prodigiously researched and revealing history of Soviet dissent, how it was repeatedly put down and came to life again, populated by a sprawling cast of courageous people dedicated to fighting for threatened freedoms and hard-earned rights."
Prize in Music
"Awarded to "Sky Islands," by Susie Ibarra, a work about ecosystems and biodiversity that challenges the notion of the compositional voice by interweaving the profound musicianship and improvisatory skills of a soloist as a creative tool."
Special Citations
"A special citation is awarded to the late Chuck Stone for his groundbreaking work as a journalist covering the Civil Rights Movement, his pioneering role as the first Black columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News — later syndicated to nearly 100 publications — and for co-founding the National Association of Black Journalists 50 years ago."
Juliana Kim reported and wrote this story for digital. Andrew Limbong reported the audio version of this piece.
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