Percival Everett, Marie Howe, and Tessa Hulls were among the winners of the 2025 Pulitzer Prizes for Arts & Letters, announced on May 5.
Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black (Oxford University Press) and Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal (Random House) won the Pulitzer Prize for history. Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery by Seth Rockman (University of Chicago Press) was a finalist in the category.
Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts (Random House) won the prize for biography. The finalists in the category were John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg (S&S) and The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker by Amy Reading (Mariner).
Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls (MCD) won the prize for memoir or autobiography. The finalists in the category were Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller (Grove Press and I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante (Penguin Press).
New and Selected Poems by Marie Howe (Norton) won the prize for poetry. The finalists in the category were An Authentic Life by Jennifer Chang (Copper Canyon Press) and Bluff: Poems by Danez Smith (Graywolf).
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans (Princeton UP) won the prize for general nonfiction. The finalists in the category were Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala by Rachel Nolan (Harvard UP) and I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist’s Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India by Rollo Romig (Penguin Books).
James by Percival Everett (Doubleday) won the prize for fiction. The finalists in the category were Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (Viking), Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine (Verse Chorus Press), The Unicorn Woman by Gayl Jones (Beacon Press)
In addition, architecture and design critic and author Alexandra Lange won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism and the late Chuck Stone, a pioneering journalist and author, received a special citation.
“These are particularly difficult times for the media and publishers in the United States,” said Marjory Miller, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, in her opening remarks. “Atop years of severe financial pressures and layoffs, amid the dangers of covering wars and natural disasters, journalists and writers now face additional threats in the form of legal harassment, the banning of books, and attacks on their work and legitimacy. These efforts are meant to silence criticism, to edit or rewrite history. They’re an attempt to erode the first amendment of our constitution, which guarantees a free press and free speech. Despite all of this, and partly because of it, today is a day for celebration.”
