The 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners for letters, drama, and music were announced Monday, April 15. The award for fiction went to Adam Johnson for his novel The Orphan Master’s Son, cited as an “exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.” Pakistani-American Ayad Akhtar’s play Disgraced about “a successful corporate lawyer whose deep-seated self-loathing is fully revealed at a dinner party” won the Pulitzer in the drama category. Mr. Akhtar has also written the novel American Dervish and is working on another novel and play. For history, Cornell professor Fredrik Logevall won for Embers of War which was noted as a “balanced, deeply researched history” into the Vietnam conflict. Other Pulitzers were given to Tom Reiss for his biography The Black Count, Sharon Olds for her work of poetry Stag’s Leap , Gilbert King for his nonfiction book Devil in the Grove, and Caroline Shaw’s for her music Partita for 8 Voice. You can see the complete list of winners and finalists in this NYT article. Also check out Hedy Weiss’s article in the Chicago Sun-Times on Mr. Akhtar’s play which had its world premiere at Chicago’s American Theater Company in January 2012.
Laura
