Every year, the Pulitzer Prize Board presides over the judging process that determines the Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists. The judges for this year’s prizes, which awards a $15,000 cash award and a certificate, were:

1. Anne Applebaum, Author and Staff Writer, The Atlantic

2. John Archibald, Reporter and Columnist, AL.com

3. Nancy Barnes, Editor At Large, The Boston Globe

4. Nicole Carroll, Executive Director, NEWSWELL and Professor of Practice, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University

5. Gina Chua, Executive Director, Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism & Executive Editor at Large, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and Semafor

6. Jelani Cobb, Dean, Graduate School of Journalism and Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism, Columbia University

7. Gabriel Escobar, Editor and Senior Vice President, The Philadelphia Inquirer

8. Vijay Iyer, Composer, Pianist and Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts, Harvard University

9. Carlos Lozada, Opinion Columnist, The New York Times

10. Kelly Lytle Hernández, Professor of History, African American Studies & Urban Planning and Thomas E. Lifka Chair of History, University of California, Los Angeles

11. Kevin Merida, Independent Journalist

12. Marjorie Miller, Administrator, The Pulitzer Prizes, Columbia University

13. Viet Thanh Nguyen, University Professor, Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California

14. Julie Pace, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor, The Associated Press

15. David Remnick, Editor and Staff Writer, The New Yorker

16. Ginger Thompson, Managing Editor, ProPublica

17. Natasha Trethewey, Board of Trustees Professor of English, Northwestern University

The winners and nominated finalists of the 2026 Pulitzer Prizes were announced on May 4th by administrator Marjorie Miller via remote video stream. The winners each take home $15,000 dollars and serious bragging rights, not to mention a ticket into a very illustrious club.

The winners and nominated finalists from the arts & letters categories (you know, “our” categories) is below.

2026 PULITZER PRIZE WINNERS For FICTION

2026 Winner:

Angel Down by Daniel Kraus (Atria Books)

2026 Finalists:

Audition by Katie Kitamura (Riverhead Books)

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters (Random House)

For DRAMA

2026 Winner:

Liberation by Bess Wohl

2026 Finalists:

Bowl EP by Nazareth Hassan

Meet the Cartozians by Talene Monahon

For HISTORY

2026 Winner:

We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore (Liveright)

2026 Finalists:

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson (Doubleday)

Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City by Bench Ansfield (W.W. Norton & Company)

For BIOGRAPHY

2026 Winner:

Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution by Amanda Vaill (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

2026 Finalists:

The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford by James McWilliams (University of Arkansas Press)

True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen by Lance Richardson (Pantheon)

For MEMOIR

2026 Winner:

Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

2026 Finalists:

I’ll Tell You When I’m Home by Hala Alyan (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)

Clam Down: A Metamorphosis by Anelise Chen (One World)

Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya (Random House)

For POETRY

2026 Winner:

Ars Poetica by Juliana Spahr (Wesleyan University Press)

2026 Finalists:

I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always by Douglas Kearney (Wave Books)

The Intentions of Thunder by Patricia Smith (Scribner)

For GENERAL NONFICTION

2026 Winner:

There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone (Crown)

2026 Finalists:

A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children by Haley Cohen Gilliland (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)

Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church by Kevin Sack (Crown)

For CRITICISM

2026 Winner:

Mark Lamster, The Dallas Morning News

2026 Finalists:

Michael J. Lewis, The Wall Street Journal

Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker

SPECIAL CITATION: 

Julie K. Brown, for her work on Jeffrey Epstein’s systematic abuse of young women, the system that protected him, and, her research into his “powerful network of associates and enablers.”

Full list of Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists may be viewed—here.

So, get to work writers and others, get yourself on the list for one of these.

Cully Perlman is author of a novel, The Losses.

*Any affiliate income from this site is used to keep the site free to writers like us.