Uncategorized | April 25, 2006

The 90th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music, awarded on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board, have been announced by Columbia University.

In fiction, Geraldine Brooks received the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, March (Viking), which imagines the Civil War experiences of Mr. Peter March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. It should not be confused with The March, by E.L. Doctrow (Random House), also a Civil War novel and also a finalist for the prize. The third finalist was Lee Martin‘s The Bright Forever (Shaye Areheart Books/Crown Publishing).

The award in poetry went to Late Wife (Louisiana State UP), by Claudia Emerson. In the book, “a woman explores her disappearance from one life and reappearance in another as she addresses her former husband, herself, and her new husband in a series of epistolary poems.” Other finalists included American Sublime, by Elizabeth Alexander (Graywolf Press), and Elegy on Toy Piano, by Dean Young (University of Pittsburgh Press).

Once again this year–for the 15th time (though only the second time in the past 20 years)–no winner was selected in drama. Nominated as finalists in this category were: Miss Witherspoon, by Christopher Durang; The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, by Rolin Jones; and Red Light Winter, by Adam Rapp.