Pulitzer Prize

Poet

b. February 21, 1907
d. September 29, 1973

“If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”

Wystan Hugh (W.H.) Auden was a Pulitzer Prize-winning British-born poet who became an American citizen at age 39. Inspired by Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and T. S. Eliot, he is considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Auden spent his childhood in Birmingham, England. His mother was a devout Anglican. His father was a renowned physician and academic. Auden’s poetry reflects both his mother’s Christian ideals and his father’s interest in folklore and mythology.

After receiving a scholarship to Oxford University, Auden studied science and engineering before switching to English. He developed a close friendship with Christopher Isherwood, a childhood acquaintance and fellow Oxford student. Auden later moved to Berlin with Isherwood, where they frequented a local gay bar and experienced the city’s “decadent homosexual subculture.”

In 1930 Faber & Faber published “Poems,” Auden’s first collection. He spent the next five years teaching English in private schools.

In 1935 Auden married Erika Mann, a lesbian writer and actress and the daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann. A marriage of convenience, the union helped Mann, who was a German Jew, obtain a British passport to escape the Nazis. The couple fled to Britain, where Auden worked as a freelance writer. He began traveling the world and writing about his experiences in Germany, Iceland and China.

Auden quickly earned recognition for his exceptional wit, fluency in virtually all forms of verse, and unique commentary on morals, love and politics. In 1937, motivated by leftist ideology, he traveled to Spain and participated the Spanish Civil War. He published his activist poem, “Spain 1937,” to raise money for Spanish medical aid.

In 1939 Auden and Isherwood moved to New York, where Auden met his lifelong love, Chester Kallman, and they began a relationship. Auden wanted monogamy with the aspiring young poet, but Kallman would not commit. Heartbroken, Auden eventually accepted it, telling Kallman, “We’re a funny pair, you and I.”

From 1942 to 1945, Auden taught at Swarthmore College. In 1946 he acquired U.S. citizenship. He and Kallman spent their summers together in Europe. Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for “The Age of Anxiety” in 1948. He received the National Book Award for Poetry for “The Shield of Achilles” in 1956 and began lecturing at Oxford University as a professor of poetry.

Auden died unexpectedly in Vienna, Austria, in 1973. The attacks of 9/11 revived his poem, “September 1, 1939,” about the outbreak of World War II. It became one of Auden’s best-known works, even though he had grown to despise it during his lifetime.

Pulitzer-Winning Poet

b. September 10, 1935
d. January 17, 2019

"I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms."

Mary Oliver was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet who wrote with reverence and poignancy about the natural world. She published 15 collections of poetry during her more than 50-year career.

Oliver was born and raised in Maple Heights, Ohio, outside of Cleveland. She was sexually abused as a small child. In her early teens, she wrote her first poems in the neighboring woods, where she sought refuge from a difficult homelife.

Oliver attended Ohio State University and Vassar College, but never completed her degree. Profoundly inspired by the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, she lived for a time during the 1950s in Millay’s home, helping the poet’s sister organize papers after Millay’s death. There, Oliver met her life partner, Molly Malone Cook, a photographer.

In the 1960s Oliver moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, to be with Cook, where the couple remained for more than 40 years. Though Oliver was open about her sexuality, she fiercely protected her privacy.

In 1963 Oliver published her first collection, “No Voyage and Other Poems.” Known for the accessibility of her writing, she intentionally avoided “fancy” words. Her blank verse is rich with earthy themes stemming from her observations of nature and the excesses of modern civilization. Many of her poems are based on memories of Ohio and Provincetown.

Oliver earned prestigious fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her list of honors includes an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award and the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize. In 1984 Oliver won a Pulitzer Prize for “American Primitive,” her fifth collection of poetry. In 1990 her collection “House of Light” won the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. In 1992 her “New and Selected Poems” won the National Book Award.

Oliver held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College in Vermont. She was a Poet in Residence at Bucknell University and the Margaret Banister Writer in Residence at Sweet Briar College. In 2003 Harvard University made her an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa. Dartmouth conferred her with an honorary doctorate in 2007.

Oliver died in Florida of lymphoma. She was 83. The New York Times published her obituary.

Pulitzer-Winning Novelist

b. January 24, 1862
d. August 11, 1937

“Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.”

For her celebrated novel, “The Age of Innocence,” Edith Wharton was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. At a time when society constrained women from achievement, she became one of America’s greatest authors, publishing more than 40 books.
 
Wharton was born during the Civil War to an aristocratic New York family. She spent much of her childhood in Europe, where she cultivated a passion for languages and the arts. Wharton gained access to her father’s library from a governess and read voraciously.
 
Though writing was not considered a proper occupation for a society woman in the late 19th century, Wharton’s talent was evident early on. Encouraged by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, her parents privately published a volume of Wharton’s poems when she 15.
 
A debutante at 17, Wharton became a keen and witty observer of her privileged social status. Her insider’s knowledge of New York’s upper class later featured prominently in her writing. At 23 she married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, a wealthy Boston banker with whom she had an unhappy, tumultuous marriage. They divorced after 28 years. Toward the end of her marriage, Wharton had an affair for several years with William Morton Fullerton, a bisexual journalist. She also had affairs with women, including the writer Janet Flanner.

Wharton crossed the Atlantic 60 times, with Italy and France among her frequent destinations. She wrote many successful books about her travels and related topics, such as architecture and gardens. Back in France at the start of World War I, she devoted herself to creating a complex network of humanitarian organizations. She received the French Legion of Honor for her philanthropic work.

Beloved for the vividness, humor, irony and satire in her fiction, Wharton garnered her greatest literary success later in life. The contradictions in upper-class society, conflicts between social and individual fulfillment, repressed sexuality, and manners of the affluent old families and the new elite formed central themes in her novels and short stories. Her famous works include “The House of Mirth” (1905), “Ethan Frome” (1911) and “The Age of Innocence” (1920). Set in New York during the Gilded Age, “The Age of Innocence” earned Wharton a Pulitzer Prize in 1921, making her the first female to receive the award. She subsequently became the first woman presented with an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University and the first to receive full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Wharton died in Pavillon Colombe, France, at age 73.

Pulitzer-Winning Journalist

b. December 19, 1987

“We are grappling, as a culture, with our collective failure to … treat men and women equally …”

Ronan Farrow is an American investigative journalist. In 2017 the 7,000-word story he broke in The New Yorker was the first to expose rape and sexual assault allegations against media titan Harvey Weinstein. The revelations ignited the #MeToo movement, a global reckoning on sexual predation and abuse of power.

Farrow was born in New York City, the son of the actress Mia Farrow and the filmmaker Woody Allen. He entered Bard College at age 11 and graduated at 15—the youngest student ever to do so. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 2009. The same year, he joined the Obama Administration as special adviser for humanitarian and NGO affairs in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In 2011 Farrow founded the State Department’s Office of Global Youth Issues, serving under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He left government to pursue his doctorate at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Farrow left Oxford to pursue journalism full-time. He had been writing for major publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times and The Atlantic. For The Wall Street Journal in 2006, he was among the first to report on the role of Chinese investments in fueling the Darfur conflict. His piece helped spark a major international divestment campaign.

Farrow has since worked as an investigative reporter and television commentator and has served as an anchor for MSNBC and NBC. His stories for The New Yorker were the first to expose sexual abuse allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves and other powerful men. Farrow also wrote the first detailed accounts of payments made to suppress sexual misconduct stories about Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Farrow faced institutional push-back and physical threats during his research and reporting on Weinstein. His exposure of the mogul marked a watershed for women’s rights, catalyzing long-suppressed sexual assault and harassment allegations against a multitude of prominent men, many of whom have been ousted from their positions. His reporting on Weinstein for The New Yorker earned the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for public service, along with other prestigious awards.

In 2018 Farrow was honored by the Point Foundation for his #MeToo investigations and his NBC News reporting on transgender issues. He came out during the awards ceremony and thanked the LGBTQ community for being an “incredible source of strength” throughout his work.

Farrow lives in New York with his partner, Jon Lovett, a fellow writer.

Pulitzer-Winning Journalist

b. July 2, 1967

“One of the burdens of being a black male is carrying the heavy weight of other people's suspicions.” 

Jonathan T. Capehart is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a member of The Washington Post editorial board. 

Capehart was born in Newark, New Jersey. He attended Saint Benedict's Preparatory School and graduated with a degree in political science from Carleton College in 1989. 

Before joining The Washington Post, Capehart was a researcher for NBC’s “The Today Show.” He went on to the New York Daily News (NYDN), where he served on the editorial board from 1993 until 2000. There, Capehart was a key contributor to a 16-month series that helped save the Apollo Theater in Harlem. The project earned the NYDN editorial board the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Best Editorial Writing.

Capehart left the NYDN for Bloomberg News and served as policy adviser to Michael Bloomberg’s successful campaign for New York City mayor. Capehart returned to the NYDN in 2002 as editorial page deputy editor. He left in 2004 to join the global public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton as senior vice president and counselor of public affairs.

In 2007 Capehart became the youngest member ever to join the editorial board of The Washington Post. His opinions focus on the intersection of social and cultural issues and politics. He hosts his own podcast, “Cape Up,” and is a contributor to MSNBC, regularly serving as a substitute anchor on programs such as “The Cycle” and “Way Too Early.” He has appeared on ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Reporters Roundtable, and in 2018 he became a guest host of New York Public Radio’s “Midday on WNYC.” 

Capehart often speaks publicly about issues of equality and social justice. He has moderated panel discussions on these topics for the Center for American Progress, the Aspen Institute, the Aspen Ideas Festival and The Atlantic’s Washington Ideas forum. Among other recognition, Capehart was named a 2011 Esteem Honoree—a distinction bestowed on individuals who have made a positive impact on both the African-American and LGBT communities.

In 2017 Capehart married his longtime partner, Nick Schmit, the assistant chief of protocol at the U.S. State Department. The New York Times covered the ceremony at which former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder officiated. The couple lives in Washington, D.C.

Immigration Activist 

b. February 3, 1981 

“I am an American. I just don’t have the right papers.”

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a filmmaker and an immigration rights activist. He founded Define American, a nonprofit organization dedicated to immigration and citizenship issues, and launched #EmergingUS, a digital platform that focuses on race, immigration and identity. 

Born in the Philippines, Vargas came to the United States when he was 12. He revealed his status as an undocumented immigrant in a 2011 essay in The New York Times Magazine in an effort to promote dialog about the U.S. immigration system and to advocate for the DREAM act. 

Vargas took an interest in journalism in high school. Before college he worked as a copy boy for The San Francisco Chronicle, eventually earning a private scholarship after being turned down for financial aid because he was undocumented. He graduated from San Francisco State and for years kept his status secret for fear of being deported. 

Vargas came out in high school after seeing a documentary about Harvey Milk, the assassinated openly gay San Francisco politician. He later described the disclosure as “less daunting than coming out about my legal status.” 

Vargas’s public immigration advocacy began with his revelatory 2011 essay. The following year, he wrote a cover story on his experience for TIME. He went on to direct a documentary called “Documented,” which premiered at the AFI Docs film festival in 2013. It was released in theaters and broadcast on CNN in 2014. The same year, Vargas was arrested in the border town of McAllen, Texas, after 21 years in the United States. He was questioned for hours, but then released.

In 2015 “Documented” earned an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary and Vargas produced a television special, as part of MTV’s “Look Different” campaign, called “White People. The program examined what it means to be young and white in America.

Vargas has written extensively for publications such as Rolling Stone and The New Yorker and was a senior contributing editor at the Huffington Post. As a Washington Post staffer, his 2006 series on HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C., inspired the documentary film, “The Other City,” which he wrote and co-produced. It premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival and aired on Showtime. Vargas was also part of the Washington Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech. 

Vargas has discussed his experiences as a gay undocumented immigrant on such diverse television shows as “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Real Time with Bill Maher.” He has received numerous honors, including the Freedom to Write Award from the PEN Center.

Poet

b. February 22, 1892
d. October 19, 1950

“I am glad I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet known for her feminism and social activism. From an early age, she spoke out against injustices against women, often rebelling against authority at home and at school. She published her first poems when she was 15. By the time she enrolled in Vassar College, which was then exclusively female, she was having affairs with her classmates. Her poem “The Lamp and the Bell” is about the love shared between women. 

Millay eventually moved to New York City where she immersed herself in the bohemian culture of Greenwich Village. She worked with the famed Provincetown Players, a theater group founded by Eugene O’Neill. She later helped launch the Cherry Lane Theater for experimental drama. During her years in New York City, she lived an openly bisexual life and counted among her friends the writers Edmund Wilson and Susan Glaspell. 

Millay is most famous for her poem “Renascence” and her 1920 collection, “A Few Figs From Thistles,” which explored themes of female sexuality. She won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver” in 1923, becoming only the third woman ever to win the poetry prize at the time. She was also the sixth person (and second woman) to win the Frost Medal for her contribution to American poetry.

The writer Thomas Hardy said that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Today, her former residence in upstate New York is a museum dedicated to honoring her legacy in poetry and social activism.

Playwright

b. March 12, 1928

“I think we should all live on the precipice of life, as fully and as dangerously as possible.”

Edward Albee is a celebrated playwright who won three Pulitzer Prizes and three Tony Awards.

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” his first Broadway play, helped establish Albee as one of America’s greatest playwrights.

Born Edward Harvey in Washington D.C., he was adopted as an infant by the prominent Albee family of New York. The family’s ownership of a national theater chain nurtured Albee’s passion for the arts.

Albee and his parents were constantly at odds over his desire to pursue a career in theater. After failing out of two private schools, he graduated high school and matriculated to Trinity College.

In 1949, Albee dropped out of Trinity to pursue a career in writing. He moved to Greenwich Village, an artistic epicenter. Albee experimented with writing poetry and short fiction before finding a niche in playwriting.

Albee’s early Off-Broadway shows received praise for their unconventional themes, including homoeroticism. He made his Broadway debut with “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” which earned Albee his first Tony Award.

Albee has written more than 25 plays. His willingness to experiment with various styles earned him Pulitzer Prizes for “A Delicate Balance,” “Seascape” and “Three Tall Women.” He received two additional Tony Awards for “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” and a revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Since moving to Greenwich Village, he has lived an openly gay life. Recognized for pioneering the depiction of homosexuality on stage, Albee weaves same-sex relationships throughout his work.

He lived for 35 years with Jonathan Thomas, his partner, until Winters’s death in 2005. Albee received a Special Tony Lifetime Achievement Award and The Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award for exceptional accomplishment in the arts.

Author

b. December 7, 1873

d. April 24, 1947

“The end is nothing, the road is all.” 

Willa Cather was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and one of the most prominent American writers of the early 20th century. She is best known for her novels “O Pioneers!” and “My Antonia.” 

Born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, Cather was the oldest of seven children. At age 10, she and her extended family moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska. During adolescence, Cather was known for her masculine style of dress and referred to herself as “Willie.” She grew up listening to the stories of immigrants and was fascinated by the people and the nature of prairie life. This experience would inspire much of her novel, “My Antonia,” published in 1918. 

Following high school, Cather attended the University of Nebraska with aspirations of becoming a doctor. After one of her essays was published in the Lincoln Journal, Cather decided to pursue writing. Having earned her degree, she relocated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She worked for newspapers and magazines, and began publishing her poetry and short stories.

Her work caught the attention of famed editor S. S. McClure, who hired her for McClure’s magazine. She moved to New York and became acquainted with many prominent writers. By 1908, Cather was one of the most influential editors in the country. Her first of 12 novels, “Alexander’s Bridge,” was published in 1912. By the 1920s, Cather was considered one of the leading American novelists. 

In 1922, Cather received a Pulitzer Prize for her novel “One of Ours.” She received honorary degrees from the University of Michigan, Columbia, and Yale, and became the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Princeton. 

From 1908 until Cather’s death in 1947, she lived with Edith Lewis, a prominent New York editor. In her later years, Cather continued writing short stories, novels and nonfiction essays. She has been hailed as one of the great writers, especially for her depictions of rural American life. 

Playwright

b. July 16, 1956

"The world should be striving to make all its members secure."

Tony Kushner is an award-winning political playwright and activist. He is best known for his epic play, “Angels in America.”

Kushner was raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana. His parents were classical musicians who encouraged their children's interest in the arts; they paid one dollar for every poem the children memorized and recited.

Kushner earned a B.A. in medieval studies from Columbia University in 1978 and an M.F.A. from New York University's graduate acting program in 1984.

Kushner's longtime involvement with activist groups like the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is reflected in his writing.  The characters in his plays often deal with oppression related to their being Jewish, black or gay.

In 2002, Kushner wrote the book and lyrics for the musical “Caroline or Change,” about racial turmoil at the end of segregation. The story is told through the relationship of a black maid and her Jewish employers.

“Angels in America” follows two couples that are linked to Roy Cohn, a lawyer involved in the McCarthy trials.  The play depicts the characters’ struggle with homosexuality and AIDS during the Reagan administration. HBO later adapted the stage version into a miniseries starring Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson and Al Pacino.

Kushner's long list of commendations includes two Tony Awards, an Emmy Award, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an Oscar nomination, an Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Spirit of Justice Award from the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, and an honorary doctorate from Brandeis University.

In 2003, Kushner exchanged vows with his partner, Mark Harris, editor at large of Entertainment Weekly, in a commitment ceremony. They were the first gay couple to be featured in The New York Times "Vows" column.