Pulitzer Prizes 2022: Complete list of winners
The 2022 Pulitzer Prizes delivered a collection of winners that prioritizes personal narrative and cultural reckoning over grand gestures. The standout selections this year reveal a judging sensibility drawn to stories that illuminate America through close observation—whether tracing poverty across generations in Andrea Elliott’s Invisible Child, exploring Jim Crow through the memoir Chasing Me to My Grave by the late Winfred Rembert with Erin I. Kelly, or charting the arc of U.S.-Cuba relations in Ada Ferrer’s Cuba: An American History. The recognition of works spanning biography, nonfiction, and history underscores a broader trend in the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction categories: that readers and judges alike are hungry for books that ground big historical ideas in individual lives and specific moments.
The drama and fiction categories followed suit with selections that challenged and reimagined familiar forms. James Ijames’s Fat Ham brought fresh energy to the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama by riffing on Hamlet in a contemporary Black household, while Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus earned the fiction prize with its wry, deliberately digressive account of a seemingly minor historical episode. Meanwhile, Diane Seuss rounded out the awards with Frank: Sonnets, a poetry collection that proves the sonnet form remains a vital vehicle for contemporary American voices.
Below, you’ll find the complete 2022 Pulitzer Prizes winner list across all major categories, along with details that explain why this year’s selections matter.
Biography
Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by the late Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly
Drama
Fat Ham by James Ijames
Fiction
The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family by Joshua Cohen
General Nonfiction
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott
History
Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer- Covered with Night by Nicole Eustace
Poetry
Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss