Pulitzer Prize winners 2025

The Pulitzer Prize honours Joseph Pulitzer who stood out as the very embodiment of American journalism.

Hungarian-born, an intensely indomitable figure, Pulitzer was the most skilful of newspaper publishers, an enthusiastic crusader against dishonest government, a fierce, hawk-like competitor who did not shrink from sensationalism in circulation struggles and a visionary who richly endowed his profession.

Pulitzer was the first to call for the training of journalists at the university level in a school of journalism and certainly, the lasting influence of the Pulitzer Prizes on journalism, literature, music, and drama is to be attributed to his visionary acumen.

In the books, drama, and music section the winners for 2025 are:

Fiction – James by Percival Everett

We published a review of this early in the year and recognised that bringing a beloved character back from a classic novel was done well by Everett.

This is an accomplished reconsideration of Huckleberry Finn, which gives agency to Everett to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom.

Drama – Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

A play about the complex dynamics and legacy of an upper middle class African American family whose patriarch was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement; a skilful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage.

History – Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black

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.

Shared with Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, by Kathleen DuVal

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.

Biography –  Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts

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.

Memoir – Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls

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.

Poetry – New and Selected Poems by Marie Howe

A collection drawn from decades of work that mines the day-to-day modern experience for evidence of our shared loneliness, mortality, and holiness.

General Non-fiction – To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans

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.

Music – Sky Islands by Susie Ibarra

Premiered on July 18, 2024 at the Asia Society, New York, a work about ecosystems and biodiversity, that challenges the notion of the compositional voice by interweaving the profound musicianship and improvisational skills of a soloist as a creative tool.

Julie Chessman