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Board lander photo
2025-26 Pulitzer Prize Board
Board lander photo caption
front row (sitting) left to right: N. Trethewey, C. Lozada, N. Carroll, N. Barnes, M. Miller, G. Chua; back row left to right: K. Lytle Hernández, V. T. Nguyen, A. Applebaum, J. Archibald, D. Remnick, J. Pace, V. Iyer, G. Escobar, G. Thompson, K. Merida (absent: J. Cobb). (Photo by Jose R. Lopez)
Board Lander Sub Title
Nancy Barnes and Nicole Carroll, co-chairs; Marjorie Miller, administrator

Anelise Chen

Publication
Clam Down: A Metamorphosis
Citation
An experimental and deeply original memoir in which the writer reimagines herself as a clam, using humor and tenderness to explore a fraught relationship with her father and the pressures of being a first-generation daughter of immigrant parents.
Publisher
One World
Tags: 2026
Categories: Memoir or Autobiography

Yiyun Li

Citation
A writer’s deeply moving and revelatory account of losing her younger son to suicide a little more than six years after her older son died in the same manner, an austere and defiant memoir of acceptance that focuses on facts, language and the persistence of life.
Tags: 2026
Categories: Memoir or Autobiography
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication
Things in Nature Merely Grow

James McWilliams

Publication
The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford
Citation
A finely-researched work that illuminates the story of a little-known yet consequential literary figure, whose life helps us better understand the cultural history of the American South.
Publisher
University of Arkansas Press
Tags: 2026
Categories: Biography

Lance Richardson

Publication
True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen
Citation
The life of a talented, complicated writer who rejected conformity and whose experiences informed the philosophical and spiritual dimensions of his work.
Publisher
Pantheon
Tags: 2026
Categories: Biography

Amanda Vaill

Citation
A lively and detailed biography of two daughters of wealthy and influential Dutch landowners who colored our nation’s history, using present tense to tell their story and past tense to chronicle the dramatic sweep of the American Revolution.
Tags: 2026
Categories: Biography
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication
Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution

Bench Ansfield

Publication
Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and The Remaking of the American City
Citation
An elegantly written and scholarly account of large-scale arson instigated by landlords that wiped out wide swaths of apartment buildings and tenements in New York City from 1968 to the early 1980s, especially in working-class and poor neighborhoods.
Publisher
W.W. Norton & Company
Tags: 2026
Categories: History

Scott Anderson

Publication
King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
Citation
A superbly written and dramatic account of the downfall of the Shah of Iran, American miscalculation and the revolution that ushered in an Islamic state, history that is timely today.
Publisher
Doubleday
Tags: 2026
Categories: History

Jill Lepore

Citation
A lively and engaging narrative that investigates why the Constitution is so difficult to amend, including a review of noteworthy failed amendments proposed by marginalized groups.
Tags: 2026
Categories: History
Publisher
Liveright
Publication
We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution

Daniel Kraus

Citation
A breathless novel of World War I, a stylistic tour-de-force that blends such genres as allegory, magical realism and science fiction into a cohesive whole, told in a single sentence.
Tags: 2026
Categories: Fiction
Publisher
Atria Books
Publication
Angel Down

Torrey Peters

Publication
Stag Dance: A Quartet
Citation
A story collection that explores versions of transgender consciousness across literary forms that seem familiar but whose effects are strange, challenging and ultimately fresh.
Publisher
Random House
Tags: 2026
Categories: Fiction
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