Uncategorized | April 05, 2005

The winners of the Pulitzer Prize for 2005 have been announced with Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Gilead (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), selected in fiction, and Ted Kooser’s Delights & Shadows (Copper Canyon Press) chosen in poetry. Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. She is also the author of two books of nonfiction, Mother Country and The Death of Adam. She teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Kooser is the current Poet Laureate of the United States, the author of eight full-length collections of poetry, nine chapbooks and special editions, and Braided Creek, a collaboration with Jim Harrison. A retired life insurance executive, he lives on acreage near the village of Garland, Nebraska.

Jurors for fiction were Rebecca Pepper Sinkler (chair), former editor, The New York Times Book Review; Marie Arana, book editor, The Washington Post; and Alan Lightman, adjunct professor of humanities, MIT. Jurors for poetry were Linda Gregerson (chair), Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of English, University of Michigan; James Baker Hall, professor of English emeritus, University of Kentucky, and poet laureate of Kentucky, 2001-02; and Wesley McNair, poet, Norridgewock, Maine.