The 2008 Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday, and for the first time since 1922—the year poetry was entered as a category—two poets took home the honors. Robert Hass won for Time and Materials (Ecco) and Philip Schultz won for Failure (Harcourt). In the category of fiction, Junot Díaz won for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books). They will each receive ten thousand dollars.
The finalist in poetry was Ellen Bryant Voigt for Messenger: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2006 (Norton). The jurors were poets Claudia Emerson, Wesley McNair, and Natasha Trethewey.
The finalists in fiction were Denis Johnson for Tree of Smoke (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Lore Segal for Shakespeare’s Kitchen (New Press). The jurors were critic Elizabeth Taylor, author Francine Prose, and editor Oscar Villalon.
Past winners of the Pulitzer Prizes:
2007 Poetry: Natasha Trethewey for Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin)
2007 Fiction: Cormac McCarthy for The Road (Knopf)
2006 Poetry: Claudie Emerson for Late Wife (Lousiana State University Press)
2006 Fiction: Geraldine Brooks for March (Viking)
2005 Poetry: Ted Kooser for Delights & Shadows (Copper Cayon Press)
2005 Fiction:
Marilynne Robinson
for Gilead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2004 Poetry:
Franz Wright for Walking to Martha's Vineyard (Knopf)
2004 Fiction: Edward P. Jones for The Known World (Amistad)
2003 Poetry: Paul Muldoon for Moy Sand and Gravel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2003 Fiction:
Jeffrey Eugenides for Middlesex (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2002 Poetry:
Carl Dennis for Practical Gods (Penguin)
2002 Fiction:
Richard Russo for Empire Falls (Knopf)
2001 Poetry:
Stephen Dunn for Different Hours (Norton)
2001 Fiction:
Michael Chabon for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Random House)
2000 Poetry:
C.K. Williams for Repair (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2000 Fiction:
Jhumpa Lahiri for Interpreter of Maladies (Mariner Books)
