May 12, 2025 – The 2025 Pulitzer Prizes were announced May 6. Along with prizes for excellence in journalism, the Pulitzer committee awarded honors for literature, including fiction, history, biography, memoir, poetry, and general nonfiction. Many of the award-winning books and the finalists are available in the Metro Library Network's collection.
Browse the list of winning titles below, along with the descriptions provided in the prize announcement. Click on the covers to put books on hold in our catalog.
Find the full list of Pulitzer winners here.
Fiction
"James" by Percival Everett
An accomplished reconsideration of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ that gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom.
Finalists
"Headshot" by Rita Bullwinkel
"Mice 1961" by Stacey Levine
"The Unicorn Woman" by Gayl Jones
History
"Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War" by Edda L. Fields-Black
A richly-textured and revelatory account of a slave rebellion that brought 756 enslaved people to freedom in a single day, weaving military strategy and family history with the transition from bondage to freedom.
"Native Nations: A Millennium in North America" by Kathleen DuVal
A panoramic portrait of Native American nations and communities over a thousand years, a vivid and accessible account of their endurance, ingenuity and achievement in the face of conflict and dispossession.
Finalists
"Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery" by Seth Rockman
Biography
"Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life" by Jason Roberts
A beautifully written double biography of Carl Linnaeus and Georges-Louis de Buffon, 18th century contemporaries who devoted their lives to identifying and describing nature’s secrets, and who continue to influence how we understand the world.
Finalists
"John Lewis: A Life" by David Greenberg
"The World She Edited: Katherine S. White at The New Yorker" by Amy Reading
Memoir or Autobiography
"Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir" by Tessa Hulls
An affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women – the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories.
Finalists
"Fi: A Memoir of My Son" by Alexandra Fuller
"I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition" by Lucy Sante
Poetry
"New and Selected Poems" by Marie Howe
A collection drawn from decades of work that mines the day-to-day modern experience for evidence of our shared loneliness, mortality and holiness.
Finalists
"An Authentic Life" by Jennifer Chang
"Bluff: Poems" by Danez Smith
General Nonfiction
"To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement" by Benjamin Nathans
A prodigiously researched and revealing history of Soviet dissent, how it was repeatedly put down and came to life again, populated by a sprawling cast of courageous people dedicated to fighting for threatened freedoms and hard-earned rights.
Finalists
"I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist’s Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India" by Rollo Romig
"Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala" by Rachel Nolan