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The 2021 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Feature Writing
For distinguished feature writing giving prime consideration to quality of writing, originality and concision, using any available journalistic tool, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000).

Nadja Drost, freelance contributor, The California Sunday Magazine

For a brave and gripping account of global migration that documents a group’s journey on foot through the Darién Gap, one of the most dangerous migrant routes in the world.

Nadja Drost accepts a 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing from Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. (Jose Lopez/The Pulitzer Prizes)

Winning Work

Biography

Nadja Drost is a Canadian journalist based in New York City after a decade based in Bogotá, Colombia. She reports and produces pieces in print, radio, and television, and regularly reports from Latin America as a Special Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. Her stories have been published in California Sunday Magazine, TIME, Maclean’s Magazine, The Globe and Mail, Al Jazeera America and GlobalPost, and heard on the CBC, BBC, Radio Ambulante and U.S. public radio. She is the author of “The Devil Underground,” a long-form narrative investigation into how gold mining has fuelled Colombia’s armed conflict, published by The Atavist (2014).
 
Nadja independently produced her first documentary, the award-winning Between Midnight and the Rooster’s Crow (2005) and is producing a documentary about a woman FARC commanders transition from war to peace over five years, with co-director Bruno Federico. Their coverage of Colombia’s peace process for the PBS NewsHour was recognized with a 2017 Overseas Press Club Award. Her work has been supported with fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute and grants from the Pulitzer Center, the National Film Board of Canada, and others. Nadja is a graduate of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Feature Writing in 2021:

Greg Jaffe of The Washington Post

For deeply reported stories that powerfully depict the suffering and dislocation endured by Americans who lost their jobs after the sudden collapse of South Florida’s tourist economy in the pandemic.

The Jury

Matt Murray(Chair)

Editor in Chief, The Wall Street Journal

Marc Duvoisin

Vice President/Editor-in-Chief, San Antonio Express-News

Bill Grueskin

Professor of Professional Practice in the Faculty of Journalism, Columbia University

Anne Hull*

Journalist, Washington, D.C.

Kit Rachlis

Senior Editor, The Atlantic

Andrea Valdez

Editor-in-Chief, The 19th

Matthew Watkins

Managing Editor, News and Politics, The Texas Tribune

Winners in Feature Writing

2020

Ben Taub of The New Yorker

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.
2019

Hannah Dreier of ProPublica

For a series of powerful, intimate narratives that followed Salvadoran immigrants on New York’s Long Island whose lives were shattered by a botched federal crackdown on the international criminal gang MS-13.
2018

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, freelance reporter, GQ

For an unforgettable portrait of murderer Dylann Roof, using a unique and powerful mix of reportage, first-person reflection and analysis of the historical and cultural forces behind his killing of nine people inside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.
2017

C. J. Chivers

For showing, through an artful accumulation of fact and detail, that a Marine’s postwar descent into violence reflected neither the actions of a simple criminal nor a stereotypical case of PTSD.
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2021 Prize Winners

See All 2021 Winners