'James' wins 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction

Percival Everett has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel James. Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images

The 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners are here.

Percival Everett won the award for fiction for his novel James, a powerful re-imagination of Huckleberry Finn told from the perspective of Jim, Huck's enslaved companion on the raft ride.

Another notable winner was Ann Telnaes, a former Washington Post cartoonist who resigned earlier this year after her editor rejected a cartoon she created to mock media and tech leaders' deference to President Donald Trump.

And multiple journalists were recognized this year for coverage of the fentanyl crisis, among other awards for excellence in reporting and criticism.

The prestigious Pulitzer Prize honors American achievements in journalism, books, drama and music.

More than 2,500 entries are submitted annually across 23 categories in a year-long process that culminates in the spring. For the 15 awards in journalism, over 80 esteemed editors, publishers, writers, and educators judge the entries.

On Monday, Pulitzer Prizes administrator Marjorie Miller began the ceremony by acknowledging the difficulties for the media and publishers in the United States.

" Atop years of severe financial pressures and layoffs, amid the dangers of covering wars and natural disasters, journalists and writers now face additional threats in the form of legal harassment, the banning of books, and attacks on their work and legitimacy. These efforts are meant to silence, criticism, to edit or rewrite history," Miller said.

She added that this year's finalists and winners entailed " courageous reporting and impactful storytelling" as well as " authors and composers who stand up for their values."

Prizes in Journalism

Public Service
" ProPublica for their urgent reporting about pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague 'life of the mother' exceptions in states with strict abortion laws."

Breaking News Reporting
 "Staff of The Washington Post for urgent and illuminating coverage of the July 13th attempt to assassinate then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, including detailed storytelling and sharp analysis that coupled traditional police reporting with audio and visual forensics."

Investigative Reporting
" Staff of Reuters for a boldly reported expose of lax regulation in the U.S. and abroad that makes fentanyl — one of the world's deadliest drugs — inexpensive and widely available to users in the United States."

Explanatory Reporting
" Azam Ahmed, Matthieu Aikins, contributing writer, and Christina Goldbaum of The New York Times for an authoritative examination of how the United States sowed the seeds of its own failure in Afghanistan, primarily by supporting murderous militia that drove civilians to the Taliban."

Local Reporting
" 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."

National Reporting
 "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."

International Reporting
"Declan Walsh and the staff of The New York Times for their revelatory investigation of the conflict in Sudan, including reporting on foreign influence and the lucrative gold trade fueling it; and chilling forensic accounts of the Sudanese forces responsible for atrocities and famine."

Feature Writing
"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."

Commentary
"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."

Criticism
"Alexandra Lange, contributing writer, Bloomberg CityLab  for graceful and genre-expanding writing about public spaces for families ... using interviews, observations and analysis to consider the architectural components that allow children and communities to thrive.

Editorial Writing
"Raj Mankad, Sharon Steinmann, Lisa Falkenberg and Leah Binkovitz of The Houston Chronicle  for a powerful series on dangerous train crossings that kept a rigorous focus on the people and communities at risk as the newspaper demanded urgent action."

Illustrated Reporting and Commentary
"Ann Telnaes of The Washington Post  for delivering piercing commentary on powerful people in institutions with ... creativity and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years."

Breaking News Photography
"Doug Mills of The New York Times  for a sequence of photos of the attempted assassination of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, including one image that captures a bullet whizzing through the air as he speaks."

Feature Photography
"Moises Saman, contributor, The New Yorker  for his haunting black and white images of Sednaya Prison in Syria that capture the traumatic legacy of Assad's torture chamber, forcing viewers to confront the raw horrors faced by prisoners and to contemplate the scars on society."

Audio Reporting
"Staff of The New Yorker for their In the Dark Podcast,  a combination of compelling storytelling and relentless reporting in the face of obstacles from the U.S. military, a four-year investigation into one of the most high profile crimes of the Iraq War — the murder of 25 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha."

Letters and Drama Prizes

Fiction
"James by Percival Everett (Knopf), an accomplished reconsideration of Huckleberry Finn. It gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family."

Drama
"Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a play about the complex dynamics and legacy of an upper middle class African American family whose patriarch was a key figure in the Civil Rights movement. A skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage."

History
"Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black (Oxford University Press),  a richly textured and revelatory account of a slave rebellion that brought 756 enslaved people to freedom in a single day — weaving military strategy and family history with the transition from bondage to freedom."

"Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal (Random House), a panoramic portrait of Native American nations and communities over a thousand years, a vivid and accessible account of their endurance, ingenuity and achievement in the face of conflict and dispossession."

Biography
"John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg (Simon & Schuster), an exhaustively researched and insightful portrait of the civil rights activist and Georgia congressman, that breaks new ground by documenting his life after the 1960s against the backdrop of new Black political strength and more recent racial justice protests."

Memoir or Autobiography
"Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls (MCD),  an affecting work of literary art and discovery, whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women — the author, her mother and grandmother — and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories."

Poetry
"New and Selected Poems by Marie Howe (W. W. Norton & Company), a collection drawn from decades of work that minds the day-to-day modern experience for evidence of our shared loneliness, mortality, and holiness." 

General Nonfiction
"To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans (Princeton University Press),  a prodigious, researched and revealing history of Soviet dissent, how it was repeatedly put down and came to life again, populated by a sprawling cast of courageous people dedicated to fighting for threatened freedoms and hard-earned rights."

Prize in Music
"'Sky Islands,' by Susie Ibarra,  a work about ecosystems and biodiversity that challenges the notion of the compositional voice by interweaving the profound musicianship and improvisational skills of a soloist as a creative tool."

Special Citations
" We have a special citation this year as well. The award goes to the late Chuck Stone for his groundbreaking work as a journalist covering the Civil Rights movement, his pioneering role as the first black columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News later syndicated to nearly 100 publications and for co-founding the National Association of Black Journalists 50 years ago."

Juliana Kim reported and wrote this story for digital. Andrew Limbong reported the audio version of this piece.