Georgia Pulitzer Prize – New Georgia Encyclopedia

Many Georgian writers have won the Pulitzer Prize for their work in the various categories of letters, theater and journalism. Other writers, editors and creators have won for their works about Georgia and its people.

The Pulitzer Prizes were established in 1917 to recognize excellence in American journalism, letters and drama, education and public service. Over the years, the original categories have been modified and new ones incorporated, so that there are now over twenty categories, including biography, drama, fiction, history, music, non-fiction, poetry and many types of journalistic writing.

The prize is named after Joseph Pulitzer, the influential owner and editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the The New York world. Known for his journalism exposing corruption in the public and private sectors, Pulitzer created the prizes in his will, stipulating that they would be administered by the journalism school at Columbia University in New York and awarded by an advisory board, known today as the Pulitzer. Price table.

A jury composed of members of the board of directors is assigned to each category, based on the number of applications belonging to a category. Many jurors are themselves former winners. Each jury presents three unranked finalists to the Pulitzer Prize Council, which makes the final decision. Every May, the president of Columbia University presents the awards at a banquet in New York.

In 2008, the literary review Georgia Review hosted a four-day celebration on Jekyll Island for recent award winners in Georgia. In attendance were journalist Hank Klibanoff, historian Edward J. Larson and poet Natasha Trethewey. The poet Stephen Dunn, collaborator of Georgia Reviewalso participated.

Creative works

Fiction Among the Pulitzer Prize winners are three Georgia women who capture very different aspects of life in the state through memorable heroines: Caroline Millerfor his novel Lamb in her womb in 1934; Margaret MitchellFor Gone with the wind in 1937; And Alice WalkerFor The color purple in 1983. (Prizes are awarded the year following a book’s publication date.) Iowa native MacKinlay Kantor won in 1956 for Andersonvillethe most successful of his fifty novels, which relates the events of Andersonville Prison during the Civil war (1861-65). James Alan McPhersonA Savannah native, won in 1978 for his collection of short stories, Living space. He was the first African American to win the prize for fiction (followed five years later by Walker).

Atlanta native Alfred Uhry won the Drama Prize in 1988 for his play Driving Miss Daisy. In 1999, the year after moving to Atlanta, kindergarten teacher Margaret Edson won for her first play, Spirit. (Piece by Texan Horton Foote The young man from Atlantawhich won the award in 1995, is actually set in Houston, Texas, with the main character simply serving as a catalyst for the family tensions the drama draws on.)

In the poetry category, originally from Savannah Conrad Aiken won in 1930 for its volume Selected poems. In 2007, Natasha Trethewey won for Native guard, his third volume of poetry. She was the first graduate of the University of Georgia (UGA) to win in a non-journalism category. In 2024 Tripas by Brandon Som, co-edited by University of Georgia Press and The Georgia Reviewwon the poetry prize.

Nonfiction works

Biography winners include William S. McFeely, a historian who won in 1982 for To agree, which covers the life of Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Four years later, in 1986, McFeely joined the UGA history department. Three works on Martin Luther King Jr. won Pulitzers—Carrying the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conferenceby David Garrow, who later taught at Emory University, won the biography prize in 1987. Parting the Waters: America in the Royal Years, 1954-1963the first of Taylor Branch’s King trilogy, won the history prize in 1989. And in 2024, Jonathan Eig won the prize for his biography titled King: a life. David Levering Lewis won in 1994 and 2001 for the two volumes of his extensive biography of WEB Du Bois, another influential leader who spent much of his career in Georgia. Ilyon Woo also won in the biography category in 2024 for her Master Slave Husband Wifewhich tells the story of the self-emancipation of Ellen and William Craft after escaping slavery in Mâcon in 1848.

Other winners of the history prize include Daniel Boorstin, an Atlanta native who won the third in his Americans trilogy in 1974, The Americans: the democratic experimentand David M. Potter, an Atlanta native who won in 1977 for writing The impending crisis, 1848-1861. Edward J. Larson, the author of Summer of the Gods: The Scopes trial and the continuing debate in the United States over science and religion and UGA historian, won the history prize in 1998. Hank Klibanoff, former Atlanta Journal-Constitutionshared the history prize in 2007 with his co-author, Gene Roberts, for their book The Race Beat: the press, the fight for civil rights and the awakening of a nation.

In the general nonfiction category, Atlanta native Garry Wills won in 1993 for Lincoln at Gettysburg: the words that remade Americaand old Atlanta Journal-Constitution journalist Douglas A. Blackmon won in 2009 for Slavery by Any Other Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War IIwhich examined the brutal treatment of convicts at Atlanta’s Chattahoochee Brick Company under the convict leasing system.

In 2024, Tyshawn Sorey won the music category with his Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith)a concerto premiered in Atlanta at the Atlanta Symphony Hall.

Journalism

There is a long history of Georgia-affiliated Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, including awards given to Georgia natives and/or alumni of Georgia institutions, as well as several non-natives who have written about state-related matters. This story begins with the second public service award given to a Southern newspaper: the Columbus Enquirer-Sun—in 1926. The prize rewards the work of the newspaper’s editors, Julian and Julia Collier Harrison resistance to teaching of evolution In public schools and on the activities of Ku Klux Klan. In 1931, the Atlanta Constitution received the same award for exposing corruption in Atlanta city ​​government. THE Great Book of Columbus And Sunday Ledger-Enquirer won in the public service category in 1955 for exposing and criticizing corruption in nearby Phenix City, Alabama.

Thomas L. Stokes Jr., the first Georgian to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, was a native of Atlanta and received a reporting award in 1939 for his writing on corruption in Kentucky’s Works Progress Administration (a program federal government launched as part of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal) while working for the Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance.

Among the many Pulitzer winners who worked for Georgia newspapers or covered Georgia topics at the time of their award was Arnold Hardy, who was a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1947. Hardy became the first amateur photographer to win , after capturing the image of a young girl falling to her death while trying to escape a fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta. The following year, Atlanta-born George Evans Goodwin, writing for the Atlanta Journalwon a Pulitzer for local reporting for his coverage of voter fraud in Telfair County during the gubernatorial election, which gave rise to the “Three Governors Controversy.”

In 1959, renamed Atlanta Constitution Editor Ralph McGill won the award in the editorial writing category for his treatment of hate crimes in Georgia during desegregation, particularly the 1958 Atlanta Temple bombing and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in the state.

Atlanta Constitution Journalist John “Jack” Nelson won the Pulitzer for local reporting in 1960 with his expose on conditions at the Georgia State Sanitarium (later Central State Hospital) in Milledgeville. Its media coverage led to reforms within the institution and additional funding for mental health in Georgia from the state legislature. Valdosta native Gene Patterson won the award in 1967 for his editorial in the Atlanta Constitution.

Moneta J. Sleet Jr. won the feature photography award in 1969 with her photograph of Coretta Scott King holding her daughter Bernice at the funeral of her husband, assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., in Atlanta . The image was first published in Ebony magazine and then distributed nationally by the Associated Press. The following year, Philip Geyelin, writing for the Washington Postwon the award for his editorial, in part for his coverage of UGA’s denial of a teaching appointment to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

In 1983, Claude Sitton, originally from Atlanta, won the commentary prize while working for the Raleigh News and Observer in North Carolina. Next year, Albert J. Scardino won the Editorial Writing Award for her work in Savannah’s Gazette of Georgia, of which he was editor-in-chief. Writers for the Mâcon Telegraph and News won a joint award for specialty reporting in 1985—Jacqueline Crosby and Randall Savage, both UGA graduates, earned for exposing the benefits received by athletes at UGA and Georgia Tech. In 1988, Doug Marlettecartoonist for Atlanta Constitution, won the editorial cartoon prize and the following year, Bill Dedmanwriting for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, won the investigative reporting award for its treatment of racist lending practices in Atlanta.

In 1993, Michael F. Toner, a journalist at Atlanta Journal and Constitution, won the explanatory journalism award with its series “When Bugs Fight Back,” which investigates the problem of antibiotic and pesticide resistance. Working for the same newspaper, Mike Luckovich won the award for editorial cartooning in 1995 and 2006, and Cynthia Tucker won the award for editorial commentary in 2007.

In 2021, Lisa Hagen of WABE (Atlanta), along with Chris Haxel of KCUR (Kansas City) and Graham Smith and Robert Little of National Public Radio, won the audio recording award for an investigative series on activists gun rights.