Andrew Sean Greer Wins the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction
On the 102nd year of the prize
The winners of the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes were announced today from the World Room at Columbia University’s School of Journalism by Administrator Dana Canedy. Canedy opened the announcement by discussing the importance of truth and journalism; she said that the books chosen “affirm the impact of arts and letters in American culture,” and the journalism honored here is “real news of the highest order, executed nobly as journalism was always intended, without fear or favor.” In something of a surprise pick, Andrew Sean Greer was awarded the Pulitzer for his novel Less. See all the winners in Arts & Letters below, and check out the complete list of winners and finalists here.
Fiction: Andrew Sean Greer, Less
Finalists: Hernan Diaz, In the Distance and Elif Batuman, The Idiot
Drama: Martyna Majok, The Cost of Living
Finalists: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Everybody and Tracy Letts, The Minutes
History: Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea
Finalists: Kim Phillips-Fein, Fear City and Steven J. Ross, Hitler in Los Angeles
Biography or Autobiography: Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Finalists: John A. Farrell, Richard Nixon: The Life and Kay Redfield Jamison, Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire
Poetry: Frank Bidart, Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016
Finalists: Patricia Smith, Incendiary Art and Evie Shockley, semiautomatic
General Nonfiction: James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
Finalists: Suzy Hansen, Notes on a Foreign Country and Richard O. Prum, The Evolution of Beauty
Music: Kendrick Lamar, DAMN.
Finalists: Michael Gilbertson, Quartet and Ted Hearne, Sound from the Bench
Emily Temple
Emily Temple is the managing editor at Lit Hub. Her first novel, The Lightness, was published by William Morrow/HarperCollins in June 2020. You can buy it here.
