UChicagoReads: Pulitzer Prize winners

UChicagoReads features books written by UChicago staff, faculty, students, and alumni or those written about University topics. Do you know of a book we should feature? Do you have a book of your own? Email us at uchicagointranet@uchicago.edu.

The 2024 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced on Monday, May 6, and a few UChicago names were mentioned. In the Journalism category, Trina Reynolds-Tyler, MPP'20, won this year's Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting along with co-journalist Sarah Conway for their investigative series Missing in Chicago. In the Books, Drama and Music category, Prof. Robyn Schiff, Director of the Program in Creative Writing at UChicago was a finalist for this year's Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her collection, Information Desk: An Epic.

UChicago has a legacy of previous winners who have adhered to the Pulitzer’s standards of the highest journalistic principles. Nine authors with ties to the University of Chicago have won the Pulitzer Prize in the Books, Drama and Music category—in this edition of UChicagoReads, we’ve highlighted three of them across three categories: poetry, biography/autobiography, and general nonfiction.

Personal History

Katharine Graham
© 1997 | 720 pages

Pulitzer Prize winner for Biography or Autobiography in 1998

Synopsis

Alfred A. Knopf described Personal History as “an extraordinarily frank, honest, and generous book by one of America's most famous and admired women”—a book that is, as its title suggests, both personal and historical. Katharine Graham tells the story of her life including her multi-millionaire father who left private business and government service to buy and restore the down-and-out Washington Post; her aggressive, formidable, self-absorbed mother, and her unexpected rise to the helm of the Washington Post after her husband’s death, going on to lead the paper through Watergate and other scandals.

About the author

Katharine Graham (AB’38) inherited the Washington Post Company after her husband’s death, becoming one of the first female publishers of an American newspaper. At first, she was a reluctant and anxious leader, seeing herself instead as an obedient daughter and “doormat wife,” but she quickly surprised herself as well as her male colleagues by embracing the new role and leading the Post to change the course of American journalism. Learn more about Katharine Graham and her time at the University of Chicago in this article from UChicago Magazine.

Olio

Tyehimba Jess
© 2016 | 256 pages

Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 2017

Synopsis

Part fact, part fiction, Tyehimba Jess's second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers directly before and after the Civil War up to World War I. Olio is an effort to understand how these performers met, resisted, complicated, co-opted, and sometimes defeated attempts to minstrelize them.

About the author

Tyehimba Jess (AB’91) studied public policy while at the University of Chicago and received his MFA from New York University. Jess worked as the poetry and fiction editor of African American Review and is currently a professor of English at the College of Staten Island. His first book of poetry, leadbelly, received the 2004 National Poetry Series award.

The Dragons of Eden

Carl Sagan
© 1978 | 288 pages

Pulitzer Prize winner for General Nonfiction in 1978

Synopsis

The Dragons of Eden is a history of the human brain from the Big Bang, fifteen billion years ago, to the modern day. Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the evolutionary purpose of dreams, the function of legends and myths from our collective imaginations—and their amazing links to recent discoveries.

About the author

Carl Sagan (AB’54, SB’55, SM’56, PhD’60) was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator best known for narrating and co-writing the award-winning 1980 television series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Cosmos has been watched by at least 500 million people across 60 countries, making it the most widely watched series in the history of American public television. Sagan wrote the book, Cosmos, to accompany the series. Before skyrocketing to fame, he earned four degrees in physics from the University of Chicago.

Other Pulitzer Prize in Books, Drama and Music winners from UChicago-affiliated authors:

• Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow (EX’39) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1976. Bellow served as a faculty member in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago for more than three decades.

• The Good War by Studs Terkel (PhB’32, JD’34) won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1985. Terkel was a much-honored writer, historian, and early in his career, a radio host.

• Machiavelli in Hell by Sebastian de Grazia (AB’44, PhD’48) won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1990. Prof. de Grazia was born in Chicago and taught political philosophy at Rutgers University from 1962 to 1988.

• American Pastoral by Philip Roth (AM’55) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1998. Roth earned his master’s degree in English from UChicago and taught in the College’s writing program. He credited his debut novella, Goodbye, Columbus, to a conversation he had as a graduate student at the University of Chicago.

• Proof by David Auburn (AB’91) won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2001. Auburn is a playwright, screenwriter, and director. Proof also received a Tony Award and is set on the University of Chicago’s campus.

• An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson (AM’75) won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2003. Atkinson is a military historian, a passion likely picked up from his childhood on military bases around the world as the son of a U.S. Army officer.