Pulitzer Prizes for Letters (books) are awarded annually to recognize achievements by American authors and poets. This year’s recipients were announced on Monday, May 4. Click here for a complete list of 2020 Pultizer Prize winners in all categories. Listed below are the winners of the categories of fiction, history, biography, poetry and general nonfiction with links to borrow ebooks and audiobooks from Live-brary (Overdrive).
Fiction
The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead 📖 🎧
A spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption.
History
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, by W. Caleb McDaniel 📖 🎧
A masterfully researched meditation on reparations based on the remarkable story of a 19th century woman who survived kidnapping and re-enslavement to sue her captor.
Biography
Sontag: Her Life and Work, by Benjamin Moser 📖 🎧
An authoritatively constructed work told with pathos and grace, that captures the writer’s genius and humanity alongside her addictions, sexual ambiguities and volatile enthusiasms.
Poetry
The Tradition, by Jericho Brown 📖 🎧
A collection of masterful lyrics that combine delicacy with historical urgency in their loving evocation of bodies vulnerable to hostility and violence.
General Nonfiction
The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, by Greg Grandin 📖🎧
A sweeping and beautifully written book that probes the American myth of boundless expansion and provides a compelling context for thinking about the current political moment.
The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care, by Anne Boyer 📖
An elegant and unforgettable narrative about the brutality of illness and the capitalism of cancer care in America.