A creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Junot Díaz won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his best-selling first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

The Pulitzer Board described the work as “a dazzling, richly layered novel about an overweight, nerdy Dominican-American teenager who comes of age in a multi-generational immigrant family, devouring comic books, spinning fantasies and searching for love.”

Eugene Robinson is a columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, where he has worked since 1980. His twice-weekly column on the paper’s op-ed page debuted in February 2005 and is now syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group to 262 newspapers.

In 2009, Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his columns about the 2008 presidential campaign and the election of President Barack Obama.

Paul C. Tash is the chairman and CEO of the Times Publishing Company, St. Petersburg, Fla.

A native of South Bend, Indiana, Tash graduated summa cum laude from Indiana University in 1976. He received a Marshall Scholarship and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of laws degree from Edinburgh University in Scotland in 1978.

Jim VandeHei, is executive editor and co-founder of Politico, a new media company covering national politics and governance. VandeHei is the first representative of a primarily online news organization to serve on the Pulitzer Board.

Keven Ann Willey, a native of Washington, D.C., became vice president and editorial page editor of The Dallas Morning News in November 2002. Her editorial department’s Bridging Dallas' North-South Gap advocacy won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Her department's four-year campaign to amend the state constitution to require legislators to publicly record their votes by name was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize.

Randell Beck, as the prize-winning executive editor of the Argus Leader from 2001 to 2008, led his newspaper through numerous public service, investigative and First Amendment projects. Those included a legal battle that resulted in a landmark state Supreme Court ruling in 2005 unsealing more than 200 criminal pardons issued secretly by the governor of South Dakota.

Ann Marie Lipinski is vice president for civic engagement at The University of Chicago. She was senior vice president and editor at the Chicago Tribune from February 2001 to July 2008. Prior to that, she served as its vice president and executive editor.

Joyce Dehli, Vice President of Lee Enterprises, joined the Pulitzer Prize Board in May, 2008.

Lee Enterprises publishes 54 daily newspapers and their Web sites. They include the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, and other mid-size and small newspapers.