Hamilton, The Sympathizer and the Associated Press have won Pulitzer Prizes in drama, fiction and public service journalism, respectively. The announcement ceremony was held Monday afternoon at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, housed in Pulitzer Hall. The building is named after the Hungarian-born newspaperman responsible for both the school and the prizes, Joseph Pulitzer.
The winners in 21 categories include the hit Broadway musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda; the novel The Sympathizer by Vietnamese-born writer Viet Thanh Nguyen; and the Associated Press in public service for its "investigation of severe labor abuses tied to the supply of seafood to American supermarkets and restaurants, reporting that freed 2,000 slaves, brought perpetrators to justice and inspired reforms." Other winners include the staff of the Los Angeles Times for its coverage of the San Bernardino shootings and the investigation that followed; T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of the Marshall Project in explanatory reporting for "a startling examination and exposé of law enforcement's enduring failures to investigate reports of rape properly and and to comprehend the traumatic effects on its victims"; Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker in criticism for her television reviews; Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick in general nonfiction; and In for a Penny, In for a Pound by Henry Threadgill in music.
Finalists for the 2016 prizes, which were not disclosed ahead of Monday's announcement, will be revealed alongside the winners on the Pulitzer Prize website.
Last year's winners included Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See in fiction; Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History in general nonfiction; The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, in the public service journalism category for its series "Till Death Do Us Part"; Diana Marcum of the Los Angeles Times in feature writing for her coverage of California's drought; and the photography staff of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (a paper Joseph Pulitzer himself came to own for a time in 1878) in breaking news photography for its coverage of events in Ferguson, Missouri.
This year's announcement marks a century of Pulitzer Prizes, first awarded in 1917 and presented Monday for the 100th time. Events around the country offered through the Pulitzer Prize Centennial Campfires Initiative, a joint venture with the Federation of State Humanities Council, will honor 100 years of excellence in journalism, letters and arts.
The "campfires" include events like Tuesday's "Journalism & Its Power to Inform: Challenges Faced by Baltimore," hosted by the Maryland Humanities Council and The Baltimore Sun; a reading and discussion series focusing on five previous fiction prize winners and finalists, held by the New Mexico Humanities Council and host libraries across the state from April to October; and a daylong symposium in May on "The Pulitzer Prizes and Public Service," hosted by the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University.
The Pulitzer Prize website features a section listing the events along with stories and other features celebrating the 100th set of prestigious awards, such as a slideshow of past winners describing their reactions to the news in one word and a short video produced for the occasion in partnership with the Newseum in Washington, D.C.
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Stav is a general assignment staff writer for Newsweek. She received the Newswomen's Club of New York's 2016 Martha Coman Front ... Read more
