Photo courtesy of Colson Whitehead
On Monday, the awards for the 101st Pulitzer Prize contest were announced, celebrating the best in journalism, art, and literature over the past year. Pulitzer Prize administrator Mike Pride revealed the recipients at a ceremony in New York and named author Colson Whitehead and Washington Post journalist David Fahrenthold among the winners.Whitehead took home the fiction award for The Underground Railroad, his widely popular novel about a young slave named Cora who decides to escape her Georgia plantation using an actual underground railroad made up of a vast train network. The book has already made its way onto Oprah's Book Club, sold more than 85,000 copies, and is slotted to become an adapted miniseries for Amazon helmed by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins. Colson had an appropriate reaction to the literary honor, tweeting Monday:
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The awards for journalism went out to some of the biggest scoops in the past year. Fahrenthold, the Washington Post reporter who broke the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape story, won the award for national reporting for his focus on Trump's charitable history. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy, and the Miami Herald received the award for explanatory reporting for working together to uncover the Panama Papers story and explain the complex offshore tax havens. The East Bay Times was also honored for its breaking news reporting in the aftermath of the horrific Ghost Ship fire in Oakland."In recent years the focus has been on the decline of newspapers large and small," Pride said Monday. "Yet the work that wins Pulitzer prizes reminds us that we are not in a period of decline in journalism. Rather we are in the midst of a revolution."Check out all the winners for the 21 awards below.Letters, Drama, and Music
- Fiction - The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
- Drama - Sweat, by Lynn Nottage
- History - Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, by Heather Ann Thompson
- Biography or Autobiography - The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, by Hisham Matar
- Poetry - Olio, by Tyehimba Jess
- General Nonfiction - Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond
- Music - Angel's Bone, by Du Yun
- Public Service - New York Daily News and ProPublica
- Breaking News Reporting - Staff of East Bay Times, Oakland, California
- Investigative Reporting - Eric Eyre of Charleston Gazette-Mail, Charleston, West Virginia
- Explanatory Reporting - International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy, and Miami Herald
- Local Reporting - Salt Lake Tribune staff
- National Reporting - David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post
- International Reporting - New York Times staff
- Feature Writing - C.J. Chivers of the New York Times
- Commentary - Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal
- Criticism - Hilton Als of the New Yorker
- Editorial Writing - Art Cullen of the Storm Lake Times, Storm Lake, Iowa
- Editorial Cartooning - Jim Morin of the Miami Herald
- Breaking News Photography - Daniel Berehulak, freelance photographer
- Feature Photography - E. Jason Wambsgans of the Chicago Tribune