Junot Diaz Wins Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Posted on April 7, 2008

The Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced. The Fiction prize went to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books). What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford University Press) won the History prize.

The Biography prize went to Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson (W.W. Norton). Robert Hass won the Poetry prize for Time and Materials(Ecco/HarperCollins).

The General Nonfiction Pulitzer was awarded to The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedlander (HarperCollins).

Strangely, there was no award in the Editorial Writing category, although there were three finalists. The Christian Science Monitor reports that this is not the first time no award has been given in a category. In fact, it has happened 62 times in different categories during the 95-year history of the Pulitzer Price. Each time it happens it must be very upsetting for the finalists hoping to win the prize.

You can see all the winners and finalists here on the official website for the Pulitzer Prizes.