How is the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Awarded?

Background

In October 24, 1916, the newly created “Columbia Prizes” were announced in The New York Times. At the time, the article noted that of all the different awards, “the two prizes which will attract the most attention will be those of $1,000 each for the best American novel of American life and the best American play.” The Times further noted, “There is an increasing number of Americans of both sexes who write remarkably well, and have the knack of plot and characterization… The Columbia Prizes should stimulate American literary endeavor. They will assuredly prove a severe test of the judgment of the jurors appointed by the university.”

In many ways, this somewhat ominous prediction has proven correct. Throughout the years, awarding the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has proved a difficult task for both juries and boards alike. As the most coveted literary honor in the United States, the prestige of the Pulitzer Prize is perhaps only approached by the National Book Award, however, the Pulitzer Prize is unique in that it is a multi-faceted award; it is not simply focused on fiction alone, but there are also awards in other categories like Music, Journalism, Photography, and others (currently, there are twenty-three different categories). The Pulitzer Prize was created, above all else, to celebrate excellence in the field of journalism, though the prestige of the other prizes has only matured over time. Internationally, the only analog to the Pulitzer Prize is the Nobel Prize (an award that considers an author’s entire corpus rather than a single book), and perhaps also the Booker Prize (an award that is primarily focused on novels published in the United Kingdom and Ireland). In the United States, if a novel is even so much as nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, it becomes a great boon for its prospects, typically sending sales skyrocketing into the stratosphere. Each year, thousands of books are sold simply on the basis of their Pulitzer recognition alone (as a former bookseller, myself, I can personally attest to this fact).

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Brief History

The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917, however the inaugural Pulitzer Prize for the Novel was not awarded until the following year in 1918 (given to His Family by Ernest Poole). In the early days, publishers and writers were invited to nominate any American novel simply by sending in a letter and a copy of the book to the Pulitzer Advisory Board. In those days, the process was often a bit messy, but a formal system was eventually adopted thanks to the influence of competent administrators like Frank Fackenthal and John Hohenberg.

With Joseph Pulitzer’s bequest granting a remarkable degree of flexibility for the awards, over time, the Plan of the Award has changed frequently. One notorious example occurred during the reign of Nicholas Murray Butler at Columbia in which the purpose of the award was changed from honoring a novel that represents the “whole atmosphere of American life…” to an award that recognizes the “wholesome atmosphere of American life…” This led to all manner of problems and snubs as juries struggled endlessly to satisfy this clumsily-worded moral criteria set forth in the plan. Likewise, the title of the award itself has been revised over time. Prior to 1948, the title was the “Pulitzer Prize for the Novel” but in order to expand and include short story collections like James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, the title of the award was changed to the “Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.”

The original definition for the prize was as follows: “Annually, for the American novel published during the year which shall best present the whole atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood.” As I write this little summary in the 2020s, the purpose of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction now reads: “For distinguished fiction published during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.”

In 2023, the Pulitzer Board made a rare announcement that it would be revising its eligible criteria in order to be more inclusive of American literature written by non-citizens of the United States (set to begin in 2025). This was mainly a response to the ongoing political debate over immigration in the United States. Whereas our political class has failed to find a solution, our cultural institutions like the Pulitzer Prize have decided to respond on their own (other institutions have similarly addressed this issue in a similar way, such as The Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Foundation, The National Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award). Beginning in the 2024-2025 year, “authors are eligible to enter their work if they are U.S. citizens, permanent residents of the United States, or if the United States has been their longtime primary home.”

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The Fiction Jury

So how does it all happen? Each year in the spring (around the time the previous years’ awards are being issued), the Pulitzer Prize Administrator organizes a unique jury traditionally consisting of typically three prominent individuals in the field to evaluate submissions in the Fiction category. While most juries are composed of three members, in the past there have been brief periods of time in which the Pulitzers maintained two-member juries (from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s) but after finding it difficult to build consensus, the standard three-member jury returned in 1967 and it remained largely consistent until the late 2010s when fiction juries began to expand and include four or even five members. The individuals serving on the Fiction Jury are typically confirmed early in the year, and as the months go by, each juror receives a carton full of books eligible for the prize. It is the juror’s job wade through the boxes of submissions and evaluate each work. Anyone can submit a work of fiction for consideration provided they pay the $75 fee, and in the digital age, while submissions can be made online in pdf format, e-books are not accepted. As the Jury works together –with a remarkable degree of independence and interpretive freedom– they slowly whittle down hundreds of novels into an agreed upon list of the top three candidates for the prize. This shortlist of the top three candidates is then sent to the Pulitzer Administrator at Columbia University before the full Pulitzer Board convenes each year in the following Spring to award the annual Pulitzer Prizes. At their annual summit, the Board either approves or denies a winner by a majority vote.

Around 1934, Juries were asked to submit three titles to the Pulitzer Advisory Board, with one preference jointly selected as the award winner. At the time, Juries were generally composed of academics with at least a certain degree of professional interest in fiction, but the jurors were rarely experts in contemporary literary fiction. From 1917 to 1974, only 5 of the 155 jurors had any experience as a professional novelist. In fact, in the early days, the Novel juries were mainly comprised of members of two literary organizations, the American Academy of Arts and Letters (where Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler also served as President) and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The actual method of determining and selecting the Pulitzer juries has never been fully explained as far as I am aware, however former Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes John Hohenberg, has detailed some of his outreach efforts to secure quality juries in his book The Pulitzer Diaries. In fact, it is only thanks to his tireless efforts that we are more fully aware of the early history of the awards (one day, his assistant Rose Valenstein happened to stumble upon a treasure trove of old jury reports hidden deep inside an unused section of the Pulitzer archive at Columbia University –an invaluable discovery for us Pulitzer nerds).

Today, the people serving on the Fiction Jury rotate off each year in an effort to offer a fresh perspective, though in the past, there have been notable multi-year juries consisting of the same members, as in the case of Jefferson B. Fletcher, Albert Paine, and Robert M. Lovett –a trio that dominated much of the 1920s and 1930s. Generally speaking, the Fiction Jury tends to consist of one academic, a fiction writer, a critic, and other similar top brass in the field. In addition to submitting a list of three top works of fiction, the chair of the jury also issues a narrative “Jury Report” which is shared with the Board by the Pulitzer Prize Administrator. This report often serves as a helpful indicator for the Board in understanding why the jury has chosen certain novels over others. However, it goes without saying, that all of the Pulitzer deliberations are kept strictly secret.

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The Pulitzer Board

The Pulitzer Board typically consists of eighteen or nineteen members (largely “journalists and academics”) who render the final selections for the awards. The Board elects its own cohort to a maximum term of three years. All of this is carefully tracked by the office of the Pulitzer Prize Administrator. For the fiction prize, the three selections offered by the jury each year are sometimes given to the Board without preference or ranking, the Jury Report (annually submitted to the board) can also make the jury’s preferences known. There doesn’t seem to be a strict rule on this question and seems to vary year to year. Of course, the Board is free to select any of the three finalists, or alternatively if none are deemed worthy, the Board may also request a fourth finalist, or else it can arbitrarily select another eligible title of its own choosing (this has happened a handful of times) and the Board is also empowered to vote “no award” if it so chooses (this has also happened a handful of times). Awards are subject to majority vote, and by three-fourths vote, the Board may select an entry that has not been nominated or even switch nominations among the categories (this would be a case for journalism awards, not fiction). Traditionally, the award has been overseen by Columbia University, as per Mr. Joseph Pulitzer’s initial instructions, and the announcements have been made at the behest of the President of the University (who also serves on the Pulitzer Board) though, notably, in recent decades, the Pulitzer Board has managed to transition away from being a mere advisory board into a more independent governing body that actually oversees the awards itself (this process was officially started in 1975, according to my research).

The final act of the annual competition for the Pulitzer Prize is enacted when the Board assembles for two days in the Pulitzer World Room of the Columbia School of Journalism (now “Pulitzer Hall”). In the weeks leading up to the summit, the Board reads all the submitted texts and reports from the juries. By custom, it is incumbent upon Board members not to vote for any award under consideration unless they have reviewed the entries. In the past, before deliberations began, the famous “Dean of Washington newsmen” Arthur Krock would often announce, “We’re dealing with something very powerful here… let’s proceed with care.”

When the Board officially convenes, it typically gathers for deliberations at a large table in The World Room (renamed the “Joseph Pulitzer World Room”) in Pulitzer Hall at Columbia University’s School of Journalism located on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus. On the far side of the room sits a large, striking stained glass window of the Statue of Liberty amidst the old New York World logo known as “Liberty Lighting the World” (or alternatively “Liberty Enlightening the World, or The Statue of Liberty”). This extraordinary stained glass window was originally commissioned to acknowledge the role of Joseph Pulitzer and the New York World in raising funds for the creation of the Statue of Liberty in 1883. It was crafted by Otto Heinigke and Owen Bowen in 1908, and it sat in Pulitzer’s New York World building for many decades before it was eventually demolished in 1955 (the building was also known as the the Pulitzer Building on Park Row, renowned for its golden dome). Later, as a gift from the city in collaboration with the mayor as detailed in John Hohenberg’s book Pulitzer Diaries, the stained glass was secured by John Hohenberg and Herbert Bayard Swope (long-time World editor, creator of the now-ubiquitous op-ed page in newspapers, and first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting). Purchased for the price of $1, it was retrieved just before demolition began in 1955 (in the 1950s, New York City sought to broaden traffic to the Brooklyn Bridge thanks to vision of Robert Moses, who also organized the demolition of the World’s neighboring Tribune building, as well). Today, this extraordinary work of art serves as a striking window to the past as it adorns the World Room in Pulitzer Hall.

Announcing the Awards

The formal announcement of the Pulitzer Prizes typically comes each year in April or May and it states that awards are made by the President of Columbia University upon the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board. Ultimately, authority for the prizes still rests with Columbia University. Since 1984, Pulitzer Prize-winners have received their prizes directly from the President of Columbia University at a ceremony in the rotunda of the Low Memorial Library in the presence of family members, professional associates, and Board members. Held as a May luncheon for more than three decades, the ceremony has since evolved into an October dinner in tandem with the Board’s autumn business meeting. While the Board has declined various offers to transform the occasion into a larger televised extravaganza, a video recording of the awards presentation has often been shared online since 2012.

Today, winners of the Pulitzer Prize are granted a relatively modest cash gift of $15,000 (this was raised in 2017 from $10,000, as opposed to the $1,000 prizes given in the early days). The Pulitzer process was initially funded by investment income from Joseph Pulitzer’s original endowment. However, by the 1970s the program was suffering investment losses each year so in 1978, the Board established a foundation for the creation of a supplementary endowment, and it began fundraising on the foundation’s behalf through the 1980s. The program is now comfortably funded with investment income from the two endowments as well as the $75 fee charged for each entry into the competitions. The investment portfolios are administered by Columbia University. Members of the Pulitzer Prize Board and journalism jurors receive no compensation, but the jurors in books, drama, and music apparently receive modest honoraria.

Apparently, contrary to popular mythology, the famous Pulitzer gold medal is only awarded to a news organization who wins in the “Public Service” category, not any of the other categories. The medal was created in 1918 and it features the profile of Benjamin Franklin with honoris causa awarded by Columbia University scribed on one side, and the other side shows a hard-working printer with the words: “For disinterested and meritorious public service rendered by an American newspaper during the year….”

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Scandals and Criticism

As you might imagine, this elaborate annual process of awarding the prizes has occasionally run into roadblocks. In some cases, the Pulitzer Board has entirely ignored the Jury’s recommendations, spawning resentment and public scandal. For example, the 1970s were a notorious decade for Jury snubs. More recently, in 2012, we were offered a closer look at the complex selection process for the Pulitzer Prize since 2012 was another rare and infamous year wherein the Board chose not to issue a Fiction award. Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours (which was a Pulitzer Prize-winner), had served on the Fiction Jury that year and, dismayed at the Board’s decision not to award a prize, he decided to share a few secrets of the Pulitzer selection process in a two-part article published in The New Yorker. In addition, Laura Miller, a Salon literary critic and fellow reviewer who served on past Pulitzer Fiction juries, also shared her perspective in an article published in Salon. Additionally, Lev Grossman shared his perspective in an article in Time Magazine. I wrote some additional reflections on the 2012 Pulitzer Prize controversy here.

Battles over the Pulitzer Prizes have often been heated, even confrontational and political in nature. At times, the relationship between the fiction jury and the Pulitzer board has been combative. In other cases, there has been tension between Columbia University and the Pulitzer Board. But in response to both scandal and criticism the Pulitzer Prize has preferred to remain maddeningly silent (a precedent which was initially set forth by the late administrator Frank Fackenthal).

Almost since its inception, a chorus of criticism has been leveled against the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, much of it pointing to the many American classics that have been glaringly overlooked throughout the history of the prizes, works like The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, The Catcher in the Rye, Invisible Man, The Adventures of Augie March, On the Road, Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor, Underworld, and many others. In his book The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value (2005), James F. English notes that from the 1920s through the 1960s roughly half of all Pulitzer winners were drawn from top-ten bestsellers of the past and/or current year. One of the more famous (or perhaps infamous?) excoriations of the Pulitzer Prize came from William Gass in his scathing 1985 essay in The New York Times entitled “Prizes, Surprises and Consolation Prizes.” It comes as recommended reading from me. Also of note is Christopher Hitchens’s equally excoriating 1992 essay in Vanity Fair entitled “These Glitzy Prizes” which lambasts the Noble, Booker, and Pulitzer Prizes for the “importation of show-biz values as the ruling values everywhere.” Hitchens says: “The unstoppably inflating awards business exists to reward sponsors, to pacify egos, to generate sales, and to puff reputations… It does make a difference, though, in the world of letters, where it helps to establish a bogus hierarchy among the composers of fiction and nonfiction alike” and he continues (after critiquing the strong-arm tactics Toni Morrison supporters employed for her Pulitzer win in 1988): “In the atmosphere created by the prize cult, it is forgotten that a canon of literature is made up of works and books, not of ribbons and awards; as a result, even the classical language of writing is now degraded by this stupid measure.”

In some ways, the ongoing struggle over the Pulitzer Prizes actually helps to elucidate the true purpose of the award: an effort at rejecting popular prejudices in pursuit of discovering the truly rarefied and enduring works of American literature. The Pulitzer Prize is an honor of literary excellence that hopes to identify a living canon of great works in real-time, without the benefit of hindsight, and in doing so, it tries to illuminate those peculiar, elusive, mysterious qualities that make a work of fiction timeless. Sometimes the prize has succeeded in this endeavor, other times it has failed –however, the story of the Pulitzer Prize offers us a unique opportunity to engage in a dialectic over the search for truly great literature.

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Pulitzer Prize Resources:

• The Pulitzer Prizes (1974) by John Hohenberg
  • A wonderful history of all the prizes with plenty of background and contextual information. John Hohenberg was the Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes from 1954-1976. He later published a thoughtful reflection on his experience in this unique role in another book entitled The Pulitzer Diaries (1997) which also comes highly recommended. Since many deliberations over Pulitzer Prize winners were often heated, Hohenberg carefully elided certain controversies in his first book The Pulitzer Prizes, only to quietly expound upon them more fully decades later in The Pulitzer Diaries.
• The Pulitzer Prize Novels: A Critical Backward Look (1981) by W. J. Stuckey
  • In spite of W. J. Stuckey’s dismissive characterization of many Pulitzer Prize winners (and quite a few historical errors of conjecture) I found this book to be at least worth perusing. Stuckey’s perspective offers a unique analysis of each Pulitzer Prize-winner. He analyzes the winners from 1917 to 1962.
• Chronicle of the Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction (2007) by Heinz Dietrich Fischer and Erika Fischer.
  • Heinz-Dietrich Fischer is a German scholar who has documented some 50 books chronicling the history of the Pulitzer Prizes. Together with his wife, Erika, they have published a comprehensive primary-source documentary history of the Pulitzer Prizes. They started their work in 1975, shortly before then-Pulitzer Prize Administrator John Hohenberg stepped down to accept a professorship in Tennessee. Since then, Erika has passed away. My hope is that this effort to chronicle the Pulitzer Prizes continues in the future.
• The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value (2005) by James F. English.
  • A thorough examination of the rise of prizes in general as a form of cultural and commercial capital, from the Pulitzers to the Academy Awards.

Critical Essays on the Pulitzer Prizes:

• “The Pulitzer Prizes” by Arthur Mizener, The Atlantic, July 1957 Issue
  • https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1957/07/the-pulitzer-prizes/640704/
• “Prizes, Surprises, and Consolation Prizes” by William H. Gass, The New York Times, May 5, 1985
  • https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/01/specials/gass-prizes.html?_r=1
• “These Glittering Prizes” by Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair, December 1992 Issue
  • https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1992/12/glittering-prizes-199212?srsltid=AfmBOop52X56JzskeU-M17tv9Yr_gqlQjBrY4wfrQn9AdX-PbzcoEhZG

Click here to return to my survey of the Pulitzer Prize Winners.

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The Pulitzer Prize Administrators

As mentioned above, the Pulitzer Prize administrator’s office works with the Pulitzer Board on a wide range of activities, including the selection of juries, prize deliberations, and the arrangement of twice-annual meetings of the Board, which chooses the winners each spring.

Technically, the de facto initial Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes was Frank Fackenthal. He had served as Secretary and then Provost of Columbia University from 1910 to 1945 where he administered the Pulitzer Prizes by fulfilling Joseph Pulitzer’s wishes, implementing the jury system and serving as central coordinator, and he managed the occasionally fraught relationship between the various constituencies involved in the prizes. From 1945 to 1948, Mr. Fackenthal served as Acting President of Columbia University during the search for Nicholas Murray Butler’s successor following Butler’s ailing decline, and following an unfortunate conflict with Nicholas Murray Butler (in which Butler refused to allow Fackenthal to be appointed President of the University), Mr. Fackenthal was succeeded by General Dwight D. Eisenhower who served as President of Columbia University from 1948 to 1953, prior to being elected President of the United States. A Brooklynite and life-long bachelor, Mr. Fackenthal received honorary degrees from Franklin & Marshall College, Columbia University, Syracuse, Rutgers, NYU and Union College; he was involved in the Manhattan Project; he oversaw the coalescence of such Cold War initiatives as the School of International Affairs and the Russian Institute, later under the Rockefeller Foundation. He received the Alexander Hamilton Medal—Columbia University’s highest honor. Thereafter, Mr. Fackenthal served as an educational consultant for the Carnegie Foundation, and as president and director of the Bushwick Savings Bank (where his father had also served on the board of directors), and then as a director at Tayler, Stiles, & Company, a financial services firm, as well as a trustee at various institutions such as Barnard College, Franklin and Marshall College, the Riverdale Country School and International House. In 1965, he was critically injured when his car collided with a tractor-trailer. He died several years later in 1968.

In 1948, Frank Fackenthal was granted a special academic “scroll” expressing appreciation for his many years of service in numerous roles at Columbia University, including the initiation of the Pulitzer Prizes and also serving as a university leader during a critical time of transition.

After Fackenthal’s departure from his role as administrator, the position fell to Columbia’s School of Journalism, namely Dean Carl W. Ackerman, to oversee the Pulitzer Prizes. Needless to say, he was immediately overwhelmed with the job. Eager to unburden himself of this responsibility, he sought the official appointment of a young professor of journalism named John Hohenberg to oversee the prizes. Hohenberg recounts this situation in rather hilarious terms in his two books on the history of the Pulitzer Prizes. Hohenberg would go on to become one of the most consequential administrators of the Pulitzer Prizes. The following list details all of the officially appointed administrators of the Pulitzer Prizes (it excludes Frank Fackenthal since he was never technically appointed to the role):

• John Hohenberg (1954-1976), a journalism professor who was handed the role of inaugural secretary and administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes when it was somewhat unexpectedly thrust upon him by the ailing Journalism Dean at Columbia University at the time, Carl W. Ackerman. Hohenberg describes his lengthy tenure in the role in his book The Pulitzer Diaries (1997). Upon his retirement from the job, he was granted a special citation and an antique plaque inscribed by all the members of the Advisory Board in 1976, expressing appreciation for his services for 22 years as Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes and for his achievements as teacher and journalist. He died in 2000.
• Richard T. Baker (1976-1981), a New York Times journalist, professor, and acting Dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia University. He died in 1981.
• Robert Christopher (1981-1992), former editor of Time and Newsweek magazines, and adjunct journalism professor at Columbia University. He was the first Prize administrator to be recruited directly from the profession; both his immediate predecessor (Richard T. Baker) and the inaugural secretary (John Hohenberg) were already tenured members of the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism when they assumed their respective posts as prize administrators. Christopher died in 1992.
• Seymour Topping (1993-2002), a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and professor at Columbia University. His tenure ended in 2002 and he died in 2020.
• Sig Gissler (2002-2014), former journalist and professor at Columbia University, known for helping steer the Pulitzer Prizes into the digital age.
• Mike Pride (2014-2017), former editor of the Concord Monitor who helped guide the Pulitzer Prizes through their centennial year.
• Dana Canedy (2017-2020), a New York Times journalist. She stepped down in 2020 to accept an executive publishing role at Simon & Schuster.
• Interim: Edward M. Kliment (2020-2022), esteemed deputy administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes.
• Marjorie Miller (2022-present), vice president and global enterprise editor at The Associated Press.

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The Presidents of Columbia University (during the era of the Pulitzer Prizes)

By tradition, the President of Columbia University has served on the Pulitzer Prize Board, beginning with Nicholas Murray Butler who served on the inaugural board in 1917.

• Nicholas Murray Butler (1902-1945)
  • Retired. Note: Pulitzer Prize-winner Upton Sinclair wrote a book on Nicholas Murray Butler’s tenure as president of Columbia University entitled The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education.
• Interim: Frank D. Fackenthal (1945–1948)
• Dwight D. Eisenhower (1948-1953)
  • On leave while Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, left his position at Columbia University to become the 34th president of the United States the following day.
• Grayson L. Kirk (1953–1968)
  • Retired after the 1968 protests concerning the Vietnam War.
• Andrew W. Cordier (1969-1970), interim
• William J. McGill (1970-1980)
  • Retired.
• Michael I. Sovern (1980-1993)
  • Retired.
• George Erik Rupp (1993-2002)
  • Retired; became president of International Rescue Committee.
• Lee C. Bollinger (2002-2023)
  • Retired.
• Minouche Shafik, Baroness Shafik (2023-2024)
  • Resigned after congressional scrutiny concerning the 2024 pro-Palestinian campus occupation (he returned to England).
• Dr. Katrina A. Armstrong (2024-2025), interim
  • Resigned in March 2025 amidst political turmoil with the Trump administration concerning federal funding and pro-Palestinian protests. She then returned to the Medical Campus.
• Claire Shipman (2025-present), interim
  • In response to the Trump administration freezing $400 million in research grants and contracts, Shipman controversially made a $200 million deal with the federal government to settle allegations that the school violated anti-discrimination law in order to restore federal funding.
• Jennifer Mnookin (set to begin her tenure in July 2026)

As an interesting point of note, various members of the Pulitzer family have also served on the Pulitzer Board, including Ralph Pulitzer (eldest son of Joseph Pulitzer and publisher of the New York World, who served as de facto chairman of the Pulitzer Board from 1917 until his untimely death in 1939); Joseph Pulitzer II (youngest son of Joseph Pulitzer and publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch); Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. (technically Joseph Pulitzer III, he adopted the junior designation, which his father had dropped after the death of the first Joseph Pulitzer. The third Joseph Pulitzer was the son of Joseph Pulitzer II, publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, chairman of the Pulitzer Publishing Company, and also chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board for 31 years from 1955-1986. He was awarded a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 “For his extraordinary services to American journalism and letters during his 31 years as chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board and for his accomplishments as an editor and publisher.” He died in 1993). From what I have found, since the 1980s, the Pulitzer Board at Columbia University has gradually disentangled itself from the Pulitzer family.

As far as I can tell, Joseph Pulitzer IV (or simply “Jay” or “Joe Four”) was never involved with the Pulitzer Board. He was known to have had a somewhat fraught with relationship with his father. Apparently, he was forced out of his role at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in the mid-1990s and later unexpectedly died in 2015. His son, Joseph Pulitzer V (great-great-grandson of Joseph Pulitzer), remains involved in weekly newspapers in Wyoming but, as far as I am aware, he has no connection to the Board of the Pulitzer Prizes at Columbia University. He and his mother, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, are involved with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, an arts foundation in St. Louis, as well as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Center. In 2005, the Pulitzer grandchildren, led by Michael Pulitzer, sold their flagship paper the St. Louis Post-Dispatch along with rest of Pulitzer Inc. to Lee Enterprises for $1.5B. In my research, I have not found any connection between the Pulitzer Prizes and another family member, the scandal-ridden grandson of Joseph Pulitzer, Herbert “Peter” Pulitzer Jr. (son of Herbert “Tony” Pulitzer), nor his first wife entrepreneur and fashion icon Lilly Pulitzer nor his second wife Roxanne Pulitzer. And while his children have apparently maintained a certain level of distance from the Pulitzer Board today, in 2011 Peter Pulitzer’s son Mac and his wife Kourtney founded a boutique hotel in Fairhope, Alaska where on the first floor they intended to create a unique “Pulitzer Library” featuring a collection of Pulitzer Prize-winning novels, plays and poems as well as nominated works. I am unsure if this little library ever opened as Mac Pulitzer apparently lost a significant amount of money in a “Bernie Madoff-type Ponzi scheme.” However, also in 2011, the School of Journalism at Columbia University officially renamed its central building “Pulitzer Hall” on the Morningside Heights campus, and at the dedication ceremony some forty members of the extended Pulitzer family gathered to celebrate.

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Summary: How are the Pulitzer Prizes Awarded Today?

The behind-the-scenes process for awarding the Pulitzer Prizes remains maddeningly secretive by design. How are the juries selected? Who is invited to join the Board? It’s anyone’s guess, really. Lamentably, no administrator has documented the history of the prizes quite as succinctly as John Hohenberg –we are greatly in need of a new leader to step forward and publish a book documenting the history of the prizes where he left off. Is it possible to predict the annual Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner? You can try, but it’s usually a shot in the dark and many predictions are often wrong. How much money does an award winner receive? Today, (as of 2024) the prize money is $15,000. When are the Pulitzer Prizes announced? The annual prizes are announced each year in April or May, which is when we learn about the finalists, winners, and even the jury members.

Then comes the award ceremony in the fall. Since 1984, Pulitzer Prize-winners have received their prizes directly from the President of Columbia University at a ceremony in the rotunda of the Low Memorial Library in the presence of family members, professional associates, and Board members. Initially held as a May luncheon, the ceremony has since evolved into an October dinner in tandem with the Board’s autumn business meeting. While the Board has declined various offers to transform the occasion into a televised extravaganza, a video recording of the awards presentation has often been shared online since 2012, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.