Colson Whitehead’s celebrated novel The Underground Railroad has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The novel had last year received the National Book Award of the US. This is for the first time in more than 20 years that the same work won the Pulitzer and National Book Award for fiction. The novel is about an escaped slave that combined liberating imagination and brutal reality.
Whitehead, known for such explorations of American myth and history as “John Henry Days,” conceived his novel with what he calls a “goofy idea:” Take the so-called Underground Railroad of history, the network of escape routes to freedom, and make it an actual train. He wove his fantasy together with a too-believable story of a young girl’s flight from a plantation.
The full list of winners is below.
Journalism
Public service: New York Daily News and ProPublica, for Sarah Ryley’s series on NYPD-led evictions
Breaking news: Staff of the East Bay Times, for their coverage of the Ghost Ship fire
Investigative reporting: Eric Eyre of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, for his coverage of the West Virginia opioid epidemic
Explanatory reporting: International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and Miami Herald, for the Panama Papers
Local reporting: Staff of the Salt Lake Tribune, for their coverage of sexual assault at Brigham Young University
National reporting: David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post, for his coverage of the question of Donald Trump’s philanthropy
International reporting: Staff of the New York Times, for reporting on Vladimir Putin’s efforts to project Russia’s power abroad
Feature writing: C.J. Chivers of the New York Times, for his feature on a Marine’s life after the war
Commentary: Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, for her coverage of the election season
Criticism: Hilton Als of the New Yorker, for his theater reviews
Editorial writing: Art Cullen of the Storm Lake Times, for his coverage of Iowa’s corporate agricultural interests
Editorial cartooning: Jim Morin of the Miami Herald, for his political cartoons
Breaking news photography: Daniel Berehulak, freelancer, for his photography of government assault on drug dealers and users in the Philippines
Feature photography: E. Jason Wambsgans of the Chicago Tribune, for his photo essay on a child who survived a shooting in Chicago
Arts and letters
Fiction: The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
Drama: Sweat, by Lynn Nottage
History: Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971, by Heather Ann Thompson
Biography: 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
