The winners of the 2026 Pulitzer Prizes were announced Monday, with Jill Lepore, Daniel Kraus, and Yiyun Li among the authors whose work was honored for achievement in literature.
Lepore won the history award for We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, her book about America’s seminal legal document. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “With the Constitution under daily threat, Lepore’s outstanding book makes for urgent reading.”
Kraus won the fiction prize for Angel Down, his one-sentence novel about a World War I soldier who’s sent with four others to euthanize a suffering compatriot. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “an impressive and surprising take on war-story tropes.”
Li was named winner in the memoir or autobiography category for Things in Nature Merely Grow, her account of dealing with the suicides of her teenage sons. The book previously won the Andrew Carnegie Medal and was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.
Amanda Vaill was named winner in the biography category for Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution, and the general nonfiction prize went to Brian Goldstone for There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America, which previously won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Juliana Spahr won the poetry award for Ars Poeticas.
A full list of winners, including ones in the journalism, drama, and music categories, is available at the Pulitzer Prize website.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
