2009 Pulitzer Prize

The 2009 Pulitzer Prizes in Letters and Drama were announced at Columbia University in April 2009. Elizabeth Strout won the Fiction prize for Olive Kitteridge, a novel in linked stories centered on a retired schoolteacher in coastal Maine, and Lynn Nottage won Drama for Ruined, set in a brothel during the war in Congo. Annette Gordon-Reed took History for The Hemingses of Monticello, and Jon Meacham won Biography for American Lion, his portrait of Andrew Jackson's presidency. W. S. Merwin won Poetry for The Shadow of Sirius, and Douglas A. Blackmon received the General Nonfiction prize for Slavery by Another Name. Two finalists were named in each of the six categories.