The 2020 Pulitzer Prize winners in 15 Journalism and seven Book, Drama and Music categories were announced on Monday, May 4 at 3 p.m. Eastern. A Special Citation was also awarded.
The Board also announces the election of its two co-chairs: Stephen Engelberg, Editor-in-Chief, ProPublica, and Aminda Marqués Gonzalez, President, Publisher and Executive Editor, Miami Herald. Both Engelberg and Marqués Gonzalez are entering their ninth year as Pulitzer Prize Board members.
The 2020 Prize winners are:
Journalism
Breaking News Reporting
Staff of The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky.
For its rapid coverage of hundreds of last-minute pardons by Kentucky’s governor, showing how the process was marked by opacity, racial disparities and violations of legal norms. (Moved by the jury from Local Reporting, where it was originally entered.)
Investigative Reporting
Brian M. Rosenthal of The New York Times
For an exposé of New York City’s taxi industry that showed how lenders profited from predatory loans that shattered the lives of vulnerable drivers, reporting that ultimately led to state and federal investigations and sweeping reforms.
Explanatory Reporting
For a groundbreaking series that showed with scientific clarity the dire effects of extreme temperatures on the planet.
Local Reporting
For illuminating, impactful reporting on a lucrative, undisclosed financial relationship between the city’s mayor and the public hospital system she helped to oversee.
National Reporting
T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi of ProPublica
For their investigation into America’s 7th Fleet after a series of deadly naval accidents in the Pacific.
Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times
For groundbreaking stories that exposed design flaws in the Boeing 737 MAX that led to two deadly crashes and revealed failures in government oversight.
International Reporting
For a set of enthralling stories, reported at great risk, exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Feature Writing
For a devastating account of a man who was kidnapped, tortured and deprived of his liberty for more than a decade at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, blending on-the-ground reporting and lyrical prose to offer a nuanced perspective on America’s wider war on terror. (Moved into contention by the Board.)
Commentary
Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times
For a sweeping, provocative and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.
Criticism
Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times
For work demonstrating extraordinary community service by a critic, applying his expertise and enterprise to critique a proposed overhaul of the L.A. County Museum of Art and its effect on the institution’s mission.
Editorial Writing
Jeffery Gerritt of the Palestine (Tx.) Herald Press
For editorials that exposed how pre-trial inmates died horrific deaths in a small Texas county jail—reflecting a rising trend across the state—and courageously took on the local sheriff and judicial establishment, which tried to cover up these needless tragedies.
Editorial Cartooning
Barry Blitt, contributor, The New Yorker
For work that skewers the personalities and policies emanating from the Trump White House with deceptively sweet watercolor style and seemingly gentle caricatures. (Moved into contention by the Board.)
Breaking News Photography
For wide-ranging and illuminating photographs of Hong Kong as citizens protested infringement of their civil liberties and defended the region’s autonomy by the Chinese government.
Feature Photography
Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of Associated Press
For striking images captured during a communications blackout in Kashmir depicting life in the contested territory as India stripped it of its semi-autonomy.
Audio Reporting
For “The Out Crowd,” revelatory, intimate journalism that illuminates the personal impact of the Trump Administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Public Service
Anchorage Daily News with contributions from ProPublica
For a riveting series that revealed a third of Alaska’s villages had no police protection, took authorities to task for decades of neglect, and spurred an influx of money and legislative changes.
Letters, Drama and Music
Drama
A Strange Loop, by Michael R. Jackson
A metafictional musical that tracks the creative process of an artist transforming issues of identity, race, and sexuality that once pushed him to the margins of the cultural mainstream into a meditation on universal human fears and insecurities.
History
A masterfully researched meditation on reparations based on the remarkable story of a 19th century woman who survived kidnapping and re-enslavement to sue her captor.
Biography
Sontag: Her Life and Work, by Benjamin Moser (Ecco)
An authoritatively constructed work told with pathos and grace, that captures the writer’s genius and humanity alongside her addictions, sexual ambiguities and volatile enthusiasms.
Poetry
The Tradition, by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press)
A collection of masterful lyrics that combine delicacy with historical urgency in their loving evocation of bodies vulnerable to hostility and violence.
General Nonfiction
An elegant and unforgettable narrative about the brutality of illness and the capitalism of cancer care in America.
A sweeping and beautifully written book that probes the American myth of boundless expansion and provides a compelling context for thinking about the current political moment. (Moved by the Board from the History category.)
Music
The Central Park Five, by Anthony Davis
Premiered on June 15, 2019 at the Long Beach Opera, a courageous operatic work, marked by powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration, that skillfully transforms a notorious example of contemporary injustice into something empathetic and hopeful. Libretto by Richard Wesley.
Fiction
The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
A spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption.
Special Citation
For her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.
The citation comes with a bequest by the Pulitzer Prize board of at least $50,000 in support of her mission. Recipients will be announced at a later date.
