Congratulations to the book winners and finalists of the 2025 Pulitzer Prizes:
Fiction:
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."
Fiction finalists: Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (Viking), Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine (Verse Chorus Press), and The Unicorn Woman by Gayl Jones (Beacon Press)
History (two winners):
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."
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."
History finalist: Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery by Seth Rockman (University of Chicago Press)
Biography:
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 de Buffon, 18th century contemporaries who devoted their lives to identifying and describing nature's secrets, and who continue to influence how we understand the world."
Biography finalists: John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg (Simon & Schuster) and The World She Edited: Katherine S. White at the New Yorker by Amy Reading (Mariner Books)
Memoir or autobiography:
Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls (MCD). "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."
Memoir or autobiography finalists: Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller (Grove Press) and I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante (Penguin Press)
Poetry:
New and Selected Poems by Marie Howe (W. W. Norton & Company). "A collection drawn from decades of work that mines the day-to-day modern experience for evidence of our shared loneliness, mortality and holiness."
Poetry finalists: An Authentic Life by Jennifer Chang (Copper Canyon Press) and Bluff: Poems by Danez Smith (Graywolf Press)
General nonfiction:
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."
General nonfiction finalists: I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist's Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India by Rollo Romig (Penguin Books) and Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala by Rachel Nolan (Harvard University Press)