As America grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic and race issues, while looking ahead to a presidential election in November, Pulitzer winners, finalists, board members and jurors have been reflecting on this moment in our shared history. Read a selection of their work below.
1. Jericho Brown, Winner, Poetry, 2020
‘Say Thank You Say I’m Sorry’
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown writes for the Book Review about life during the pandemic. Via The New York Times.
2. Wynton Marsalis, Winner, Music, 1997
The US is still segregated – but is our democracy up to the challenge?
We’re seeing the same problems with race that Abraham Lincoln once complained about, but blackness is threaded into the heart of America’s identity and can never be erased. Via The Guardian.
4. Anne Applebaum, Winner, General Nonfiction, 2004
History Will Judge the Complicit
Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president? Via The Atlantic.
5. Hilton Als, Winner, Criticism, 2017
My Mother’s Dreams for Her Son, and All Black Children
She longed for black people in America not to be forever refugees — confined by borders that they did not create and by a penal system that killed them before they died. Via The New Yorker.
6. Wesley Lowery, Washinton Post Staff Member, National Reporting, 2016
A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists
What’s different, in this moment, is that the editors of our country’s most esteemed outlets no longer hold a monopoly on publishing power. Via The New York Times.
7. Elizabeth Alexander, Finalist, Biography, 2016, Poetry, 2006 and Pulitzer Prize Board member
The Trayvon Generation
For Solo, Simon, Robel, Maurice, Cameron, and Sekou. Via The New Yorker.
8. Nicole Carroll, Pulitzer Prize Board member, interviews W. Caleb McDaniel, Winner, History, 2020
The Backstory: The little known story about a former slave who sued her captor and won. Via USA Today.
Numerous other Pulitzer winners, finalists and jurors have weighed in. Music juror Jon Batiste led a musical march in New York City, Ricochet interviewed 2002 General Nonfiction winner Diane McWhorter, and two-time Fiction winner Colson Whitehead spoke to the Guardian.
Check back here for more reading as it becomes available.