Novelist Percival Everett and playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins among
Pulitzer winners in the arts
[May 06, 2025]
By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) — Percival Everett's novel "James,” his radical
reimagining of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the perspective
of the enslaved title character, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
“Purpose,” Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ drawing-room drama about an
accomplished Black family destroying itself from within, won for drama.
It also earned six Tony Award nominations last week.
Everett’s Pulitzer confirmed the million-selling “James” as the most
celebrated and popular U.S. literary novel of 2024, and accelerated the
68-year-old author’s remarkable rise after decades of being little known
to the general public. Since 2021, he has won the PEN/Jean Stein Award
for “Dr. No,” was a Pulitzer finalist for “Telephone” and on the Booker
shortlist for “The Trees.” Before Monday, “James” had already won the
National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize and the Carnegie Medal for
fiction. His racial and publishing satire “Erasure,” released in 2001,
was adapted into the Oscar-nominated 2023 film “American Fiction.”
The Pulitzer citation called “James” an “accomplished reconsideration”
that illustrates “the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new
take on the search for family and freedom.” Everett said in a statement
that he was “shocked and pleased, but mostly shocked. This is a
wonderful honor.”
“Purpose” was praised in its citation as “a skillful blend of drama and
comedy that probes how different generations define heritage.”
Jacobs-Jenkins had been twice nominated for a drama Pulitzer, for
“Everybody” in 2018 and “Gloria” in 2016. He won the Tony Award for best
play revival last year for “Appropriate,” a work centered on a family
reunion in Arkansas where everyone has competing motivations and
grievances. He is on the host committee of this year’s Met Gala.
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Author Percival Everett attends the 75th National Book Awards
ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in New
York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File)
 Also Monday, Pulitzer officials
announced that Jason Roberts won the biography award for “Every
Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life” and
Benjamin Nathans' "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many
Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement" had been cited for general
nonfiction. Two books were announced as history winners, both of
them, like “James” and “Purpose,” explorations of race in U.S.
history and culture: Edda L. Fields-Black's “Combee: Harriet Tubman,
The Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War” and
Kathleen DuVal's "Native Nations: A Millennium in North America."
Marie Howe's “New and Selected Poems” won for poetry, and
composer-percussionist Susie Ibarra's “Sky Islands,” an eight-piece
ensemble inspired by the rainforest habitats of Luzon, Philippines,
was awarded the Pulitzer for music. The Pulitzer for autobiography
went to Tessa Hulls' multigenerational “Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic
Memoir," her first book.
The Pulitzers were announced at a time when the National Endowment
for the Arts, which has provided support for thousands of writers
and literary organizations, was cutting back funding and pushing
staff members to leave. Howe and Everett are both past recipients of
NEA creative writing fellowships.
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