Three academics at American universities were among Monday’s winners of 2024 Pulitzer Prizes for their literary or musical achievements, as announced by the prize’s board.
Among the recipients are:
- Jacqueline Jones, winner of the Pulitzer in history for No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era (Basic Books), which the board described as a “breathtakingly original reconstruction of free Black life in Boston that profoundly reshapes our understanding of the city’s abolitionist legacy and the challenging reality for its Black residents.” Jones is a professor emerita and the Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History and Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History at the University of Texas at Austin.
- Cristina Rivera Garza, winner of the Pulitzer in autobiography for Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice (Hogarth), a “genre-bending account of the author’s 20-year-old sister, murdered by a former boyfriend, that mixes memoir, feminist investigative journalism and poetic biography stitched together with a determination born of loss.” Rivera Garza is the M.D. Anderson Professor in Hispanic Studies and director of the creative writing program in Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston.
- Tyshawn Sorey, winner of the Pulitzer in music for Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith), “an introspective saxophone concerto with a wide range of textures presented in a slow tempo, a beautiful homage that’s quietly intense, treasuring intimacy rather than spectacle.” Sorey is the Presidential Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.
