Academics were among the winners of Pulitzer Prizes in History, Letters, and Music announced this afternoon.
In History, Fredrik Logevall won for Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (Random House), cited as “a balanced, deeply researched history of how, as French colonial rule faltered, a succession of American leaders moved step by step down a road to full-blown war.” Logevall is a professor of international studies and of history at Cornell University, where he also directs the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.
In Fiction, Adam Johnson, who teaches creative writing at Stanford University, was lauded for his “exquisitely crafted” novel The Orphan Master’s Son (Random House) set in totalitarian North Korea.
The Pulitzer in Poetry went to Sharon Olds for Stag’s Leap (Alfred A. Knopf), a collection of “unflinching poems” on the poet’s divorce that examine “love, sorrow, and the limits of self-knowledge.” Olds teaches in the graduate creative-writing program at New York University.
Finally in Music, Caroline Shaw won for “Partita for 8 Voices,” a recording released last October by New Amsterdam Records. Shaw, a graduate student in composition at Princeton University, was cited for “a highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects.”
Go here for a complete list of Pulitzer winners, finalists, and juries.
