21st Century Literature discussion

The timeline and rules for the Pulitzer didn't feel as cleanly articulated and laid out as for the National Book Awards, but with all the journalism categories, it is more extensive in at least some ways. Here are a few tidbits and a link or two:

This award appears to be announced fairly early in the year. The 97th annual winners were released April 15, 2013. The awards dinner is apparently the following May.

The applicants have basically been submitted -- most by the end of 2013, journalism by 1/25/14.

http://www.pulitzer.org/how_to_enter

The PDF here states criteria. The focus is on American (did not see a definition) authors and life, U.S. history, published in the previous year.

Categories outside journalism include: Fiction; Drama; History; Biography or Autobiography; Poetry; General Nonfiction; Music.

For 2013 awards: http://www.pulitzer.org/awards/2013

Today's (4/14/2014) announcements of Pulitzer Prizes in the areas of:

Letters, Drama, and Music

Fiction
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown)

Drama
The Flick by Annie Baker

History
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor (W.W. Norton)

Biography or Autobiography
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Poetry
3 Sections: Poems by Vijay Seshadri (Graywolf Press)

General Nonfiction
Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin (Bantam Books)

Music
Become Ocean by John Luther Adams (Taiga Press/Theodore Front Musical Literature)

Winners in journalism, et al, may be found here:

http://www.thewire.com/culture/2014/0...

Also: http://www.pulitzer.org/

yay for the Goldfinch!!

Oh ghosh, I was rather underwhelmed by this novel. But I was also underwhelmed by The Luminaries so obviously my tastes are out of whack with contemporary book prizes....

An email brought this NYT review to my attention:

After a terrorist bomb explodes in an art museum, the young narrator of Donna Tartt’s new novel, “The Goldfinch,” becomes the protector of a 17th-century painting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/boo...

I agree with the reviewer--and the use of the terrorist bombing makes those first 4 chapters some of the most chilling I've ever read. I liked this part of the NY Times review you cite:

“The Goldfinch” is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind. I read it with that mixture of terror and excitement I feel watching a pitcher carry a no-hitter into the late innings. You keep waiting for the wheels to fall off, but in the case of “The Goldfinch,” they never do."

At times, for me, those wheels did get a bit wobbly, but I agree that they never fell off.

I'm also excited for Megan Marshall's win, since Margaret Fuller has always interested me, both as a woman and a member of the Transcendentalists:

Former Radcliffe Fellow’s book ‘Margaret Fuller: A New American Life’ honored
Harvard Gazette, April 14, 2014

Megan Marshall was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2013), her richly detailed biography of the 19th-century author, journalist, and women’s rights advocate who perished in a shipwreck off New York’s Fire Island.

Marshall, 59, was a 2006-07 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. At Harvard College, she studied American literature and poetry, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and earning the Harvard Monthly Prize, an award given to the most promising student writer. She currently teaches nonfiction writing and historical research at Emerson College in Boston.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story...

I have no idea how we recommend books to the moderators, but I'd really like to see this book added to our "non fiction" bookshelf. At present I'm only seeing one other book there. Thanks.

The Pulitzer seems to publish "finalists" at the same time as "winners", as a separate category. (Someone please comment if they are aware of publication of either long lists or short lists for this prize.) http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/2014

Letters, Drama, and Music Finalists

Fiction

The Son by Philipp Meyer (Ecco)

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Drama

The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence by Madeleine George

Fun Home by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori

History

A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama's America by Jacqueline Jones (Basic Books)

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser (The Penguin Press)

Biography or Autobiography

Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World by Leo Damrosch (Yale University Press)

Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber (Liveright)

Poetry

The Sleep of Reason by Morri Creech (The Waywiser Press)

The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka (Penguin)

General Nonfiction

The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass (Alfred A. Knopf)

The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War by Fred Kaplan (Simon & Schuster)

Music

The Gospel According to the Other Mary by John Adams (Boosey & Hawkes)

Invisible Cities by Christopher Cerrone (Outburst-Inburst Musics)

Repeat: http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/2014

(If any one spots the missing links here, please post them and I'll update this list.)

Lily wrote: "Today's (4/14/2014) announcements of Pulitzer Prizes in the areas of:

Letters, Drama, and Music

Fiction
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt


Nice to see The Goldfinch awarded a Pulitzer.