Pulitzer Prize 2020: From Colson Whitehead's second Pulitzer to first audio reporting award, full list of winners

The 2020 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced on 4 May through an online video, after being delayed for two weeks because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy talked about the “deeply trying times” amidst which the prizes were being announced, reminding of the importance of journalist and of how the arts continue to “sustain, unite and inspire.”

The Fiction prize was awarded to Colson Whitehead for his novel The Nickel Boys, about an abusive reform school in Florida, making it his second Pulitzer, having first won for his 2017 book The Underground Railroad.

This year, a new prize for audio reporting was also introduced, and awarded to the This American Life podcast’s staff, along with Molly O’Toole of the Los Angeles Times and Emily Green, a Vice News freelancer, for the episode ‘The Out Crowd,’ about the impact of the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy.

Ida B Wells was also honoured with a posthumous special citation for her courageous reporting on lynching, and $50,000 will be donated to support her mission.

The full list of 2020 Pulitzer Prize winners:

JOURNALISM

Public Service Anchorage Daily News in collaboration with ProPublica

Breaking News Reporting Staff of The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky.

Investigative Reporting Brian M Rosenthal of The New York Times

Explanatory Reporting Staff of The Washington Post

Local Reporting   Staff of The Baltimore Sun

National Reporting T Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi of ProPublica and Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times

International Reporting Staff of The New York Times

Feature Writing Ben Taub of The New Yorker

Commentary Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times

Criticism Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times

Editorial Writing Jeffery Gerritt of the Palestine (Tx) Herald-Press

Editorial Cartooning Barry Blitt, contributor, The New Yorker

Breaking News Photography Photography Staff of Reuters

Feature Photography Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of the Associated Press

Audio Reporting Staff of This American Life with Molly O’Toole of the Los Angeles Times and Emily Green, freelancer, Vice News for ‘The Out Crowd’

LETTERS AND DRAMA

Fiction The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Drama A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson

History Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W Caleb McDaniel (Oxford University Press)

Biography Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser (Ecco/HarperCollins)

Poetry The Tradition by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press)

General Nonfiction The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care by Anne Boyer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin (Metropolitan Books)

Music The Central Park Five by Anthony Davis, premiered by Long Beach Opera on June 15, 2019

Special Citation Ida B Wells

The Pulitzer Prizes are considered the most prestigious journalism honour in the United States.

The 19-member Pulitzer Board consists of journalists and news executives from across the US, and five academics or persons in the arts.

The Prizes were established by Hungarian-American journalist and newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who bequeathed his money to Columbia University upon his death in 1911. The Pulitzer Prizes, from a portion of this money, were first awarded in 1917.