The Pulitzer
Prizes for 2012 have been announced and disappointingly no prize
for the fiction category has been awarded. Apparently, the 20-person Pulitzer board
was unable to agree on a winner from the three nominated novels -
Karen Russell's
Swamplandia, David Foster Wallace's
The Pale King and Denis Johnson's
Train Dreams.
It's a shame because a Pulitzer prize guarantees a huge readership for the winning book; Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad reached a much wider audience after it won the prize last year.
It's not the first time no fiction Pulitzer has been awarded. In 1977 Norman Maclean's novel A River Runs Through It was nominated for the prize by the fiction jury, only for the board to ignore it and decide to award no winner that year. At least this year's non-result isn't quite as damning as that.
Here are the other Pulitzer winners for 2012:
Letters, Drama, and Music
Drama
Water
by the Spoonful by Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes
History
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by the late Manning
Marable
Biography or Autobiography
George F.
Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis
Poetry
Life on
Mars by Tracy K. Smith
General Nonfiction
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen
Greenblatt
Music
Silent
Night: Opera in Two Acts
Journalism
Public Service
The Philadelphia Inquirer for
'Assault on Learning'
Breaking News Reporting
The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News Staff
Investigative Reporting
Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley of the
Associated Press for 'Probe Into NYPD
Intelligence Operations'
Michael J. Berens and Ken Armstrong of The Seattle Times for 'Methadone and the Politics of Pain'
Explanatory Reporting
David Kocieniewski of The New York Times for
'But Nobody Pays That'
Local Reporting
Sara Ganim
and members of The Patriot-News Staff, Harrisburg,
PA
National Reporting
David Wood of The Huffington Post for 'Beyond
the Battlefield'
International Reporting
Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times
Feature Writing
Eli Sanders of The Stranger, a Seattle (Wash.) weekly for
'The Bravest Woman in Seattle'
Commentary
Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune
Criticism
Wesley
Morris of The Boston Globe
Editorial Writing
No award
Editorial Cartooning
Matt Wuerker of POLITICO
Breaking News Photography
Massoud Hossaini of Agence France-Presse (for his
devastating photograph of a young Shiite woman, bloody and
screaming after a suicide attack in Kabul
Feature Photography
Craig F. Walker of The Denver Post (for his moving
photography of Iraq War Veteran with post-traumatic stress
disorder)
