For distinguished criticism, using any available journalistic tool, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000).
Alexandra Lange, contributing writer, Bloomberg CityLab
For graceful and genre-expanding writing about public spaces for families, deftly using interviews, observations and analysis to consider the architectural components that allow children and communities to thrive.
Alexandra Lange of Bloomberg CityLab accepts the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. (David Dini/The Pulitzer Prizes)
Winning Work
March 23, 2024
April 27, 2024
September 14, 2024
October 31, 2024
December 31, 2024
Biography
Alexandra Lange is a design critic and author. Her essays, reviews and profiles have appeared in numerous design publications including Architect, Bloomberg CityLab, Harvard Design Magazine, and Metropolis, as well as in The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and the New York Times. Her most recent book, "Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall," was published by Bloomsbury USA in 2022. Lange was a 2014 Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and is a 2025 Fellow at MacDowell.
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Criticism in 2025:
Sara Holdren of New York Magazine
For insightful theater criticism that combines a reporter's eye and a historian's memory to inform readers about current stage productions.
Vinson Cunningham of The New Yorker
For illuminating and personal reviews of work that appears on television, streaming services or social media, trenchant criticism that explores contemporary issues and society.
The Jury
The Jury
Michael W. Miller(Chair)
Senior Editor, Features/WSJ Weekend, The Wall Street Journal
Gustavo Arellano
Columnist, Los Angeles Times
Craig Jenkins
Pop Critic/Features Writer, New York Magazine
Emily Nussbaum
Staff Writer, The New Yorker
Anne Helen Petersen
Culture Writer, Lummi Island, Wash.
Winners in Criticism
Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times
For richly evocative and genre-spanning film criticism that reflects on the contemporary moviegoing experience.
Andrea Long Chu of New York Magazine
For book reviews that scrutinize authors as well as their works, using multiple cultural lenses to explore some of society’s most fraught topics.
Salamishah Tillet, contributing critic at large, The New York Times
For learned and stylish writing about Black stories in art and popular culture–work that successfully bridges academic and nonacademic critical discourse.
Wesley Morris of The New York Times
For unrelentingly relevant and deeply engaged criticism on the intersection of race and culture in America, written in a singular style, alternately playful and profound.
2025 Prize Winners
Staff of The Wall Street Journal
For chronicling political and personal shifts of the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, including his turn to conservative politics, his use of legal and illegal drugs and his private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme and Jessica Gallagher of The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times
For a compassionate investigative series that captured the breathtaking dimensions of Baltimore’s fentanyl crisis and its disproportionate impact on older Black men, creating a sophisticated statistical model that The Banner shared with other newsrooms.
Mosab Abu Toha, contributor, The New Yorker
For essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel.
Mark Warren, contributor, Esquire
For a sensitive portrait of a Baptist pastor and small town mayor who died by suicide after his secret digital life was exposed by a right-wing news site.