2017 Pulitzer Prize

The 2017 Pulitzer Prizes in Letters and Drama were announced at Columbia University in April 2017. Colson Whitehead won the Fiction prize for The Underground Railroad, which imagines the escape route from slavery as a literal network of tracks, and Lynn Nottage won Drama for Sweat, set among factory workers in Reading, Pennsylvania. Heather Ann Thompson took History for Blood in the Water, her account of the 1971 Attica prison uprising. Hisham Matar won Biography or Autobiography for The Return, about his search for his father in Libya, and Tyehimba Jess won Poetry for Olio. Matthew Desmond received the General Nonfiction prize for Evicted. Two finalists were named in each of the six categories.