Bibliofemme News
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06/04/2005
Pulitzer Prize winners announced
Marilynne Robinson was awarded the Pulitzer prize for fiction for her novel Gilead. Gilead is a poetic modern day tale about a 76 year old Iowa minister looking back at his life and forbears.
Robinson, whose book Gilead was awarded an American National Book Critics Circle prize for Gilead, won the PEN/Hemingway Award for her debut novel Housekeeping in 1981. When awarded the Pulitzer she said: "It's an award you've heard of your entire life. But I'm aware there are lots of good books, and there is always something accidental when one is singled out."
Gilead is written in the form of a letter, which the principle character Rev John Ames, who is dying, is writing to his six year old son. The book, which is set in 1956 deals with the minister's life and the lives of his father and grandfather who were both preachers.
The biography prize went to Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan for their book de Kooning: An American Master, the prize for poetry went to national poet laureate Ted Kooser for his Delights and Shadows, and Steve Coll got his second Pulitzer, winning in the general nonfiction category for Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to Sept. 10 2001. The prize for history went to David Fischer for his book Washington's Crossing.
John Patrick Shanley won the drama prize for a play that deals with a priest suspected of molesting a child and with a nun who takes him on, defying a patriarchal church.
The prizes of $10,000 each are awarded by Columbia University upon the recommendation of an 18-member Pulitzer board. In lieu of the cash prize, the winner in public service receives a gold medal.
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