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The 2019 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Criticism

Finalist: Manohla Dargis of The New York Times

For authoritative film criticism that considered the impact of movies both inside the theater and in the wider world with rare passion, craftsmanship and insight.

Nominated Work

Biography

Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times. She joined the paper in August 2004 as a chief film critic, a position she shares with her colleague A.O. Scott. Ms. Dargis has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Criticism four times.

Previously, Ms. Dargis was a lead film critic for The Los Angeles Times. A former film critic and editor for the alternative Los Angeles newspaper LA Weekly, she has written for publications including The Village Voice, where she wrote two columns about the avant-garde film scene in New York. Her work has been anthologized in “Action/Spectacle Cinema,” “American Film Critics: From the Silents Until Now,” “American Independent Cinema,” “Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary,” “Quentin Tarantino Interviews” and “Women and Film.” Her monograph on the film “L.A. Confidential” was published in 2003 by the British Film Institute.

Ms. Dargis has taught in the graduate film department at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and is a former adjunct professor in the critical studies department at the University of Southern California. She is a former member of the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. She served on the selection committee for the New York Film Festival from 2000 to 2002.

Born in Rapid City, S.D., Ms. Dargis was raised in the East Village in New York. She graduated from Purchase College at the State University of New York in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in literature. She has a master’s degree from the cinema studies graduate program at New York University and is working on her doctoral dissertation.

Ms. Dargis lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Lou Amdur.

Winners

Prize Winner in Criticism in 2019:

Carlos Lozada of The Washington Post

For trenchant and searching reviews and essays that joined warm emotion and careful analysis in examining a broad range of books addressing government and the American experience. Criticism

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Criticism in 2019:

Jill Lepore of The New Yorker

For critical, yet restrained, explorations of incredibly varied subjects, from Frankenstein to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that combined literary nuance with intellectual rigor.

The Jury

Mark Feeney(Chair)*

Arts Writer

Lauren Gustus

Editor, The Sacramento Bee; West Regional Editor, McClatchy

Lydia Polgreen

Editor-in-Chief

Alisa Solomon

Professor of Journalism; Director, Arts Concentration, MA Journalism Program

Joe Stephens

Director, Program in Journalism; Ferris Professor of Journalism in Residence

Winners in Criticism

2018

Jerry Saltz of New York Magazine

For a robust body of work that conveyed a canny and often daring perspective on visual art in America, encompassing the personal, the political, the pure and the profane.
2017

Hilton Als

For bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context, particularly the shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race.
2016

Emily Nussbaum

For television reviews written with an affection that never blunts the shrewdness of her analysis or the easy authority of her writing.
2015

Mary McNamara

For savvy criticism that uses shrewdness, humor and an insider's view to show how both subtle and seismic shifts in the cultural landscape affect television.
See All Criticism

2019 Prize Winners

See All 2019 Winners