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2025 Pulitzer Prizes

Journalism

Category
Winners
Finalists

ProPublica, for urgent reporting by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, Cassandra Jaramillo and Stacy Kranitz

About pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague “life of the mother” exceptions in states with strict abortion laws.
Finalists:

Staff of The Washington Post

For urgent and illuminating coverage of the July 13 attempt to assassinate then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, including detailed story-telling and sharp analysis that coupled traditional police reporting with audio and visual forensics.
Finalists:

Staff of Reuters

For a boldly reported exposé of lax regulation in the U.S. and abroad that makes fentanyl, one of the world’s deadliest drugs, inexpensive and widely available to users in the United States.
Finalists:

Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme and Jessica Gallagher of The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times

For a compassionate investigative series that captured the breathtaking dimensions of Baltimore’s fentanyl crisis and its disproportionate impact on older Black men, creating a sophisticated statistical model that The Banner shared with other newsrooms.
Finalists:

Staff of The Wall Street Journal

For chronicling political and personal shifts of the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, including his turn to conservative politics, his use of legal and illegal drugs and his private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Finalists:

Declan Walsh and the Staff of The New York Times

For their revelatory investigation of the conflict in Sudan, including reporting on foreign influence and the lucrative gold trade fueling it, and chilling forensic accounts of the Sudanese forces responsible for atrocities and famine.
Finalists:

Mark Warren, contributor, Esquire

For a sensitive portrait of a Baptist pastor and small town mayor who died by suicide after his secret digital life was exposed by a right-wing news site.
Finalists:

Mosab Abu Toha, contributor, The New Yorker

For essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel.
Finalists:

Alexandra Lange, contributing writer, Bloomberg CityLab

For graceful and genre-expanding writing about public spaces for families, deftly using interviews, observations and analysis to consider the architectural components that allow children and communities to thrive.
Finalists:

Ann Telnaes of The Washington Post

For delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years.
Finalists:

Doug Mills of The New York Times

For a sequence of photos of the attempted assassination of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, including one image that captures a bullet whizzing through the air as he speaks.
Finalists:

Moises Saman, contributor, The New Yorker

For his haunting black and white images of Sednaya prison in Syria that capture the traumatic legacy of Assad’s torture chambers, forcing viewers to confront the raw horrors faced by prisoners and contemplate the scars on society. (Moved by the jury from Breaking News Photography.)
Finalists:

Staff of The New Yorker

For their “In the Dark” podcast, a combination of compelling storytelling and relentless reporting in the face of obstacles from the U.S. military, a four-year investigation into one of the most high-profile crimes of the Iraq War–the murder of 25 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha.
Finalists:

Special Citations

Chuck Stone

A special citation is awarded to the late Chuck Stone for his groundbreaking work as a journalist covering the Civil Rights Movement, his pioneering role as the first Black columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News–later syndicated to nearly 100 publications–and for co-founding the National Association of Black Journalists 50 years ago.

Books, Drama & Music

Category
Winners
Finalists

James, by Percival Everett (Doubleday)

An accomplished reconsideration of “Huckleberry Finn” that gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom.
Finalists:

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 skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage.
Finalists:

Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War, by Edda L. Fields-Black (Oxford University Press)

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.

Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, by Kathleen DuVal (Random House)

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.
Finalists:

Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, by Jason Roberts (Random House)

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.
Finalists:

Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir, by Tessa Hulls (MCD)

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.
Finalists:

New and Selected Poems, by Marie Howe (W. W. Norton & Company)

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

To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, by Benjamin Nathans (Princeton University Press)

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.
Finalists:

Sky Islands, by Susie Ibarra

Premiered on July 18, 2024 at the Asia Society, New York, N.Y., 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.
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