A rundown of the Pulitzer Prize
For American wordsmiths across the country and abroad, the Pulitzer Prize is the highest honor attainable, aside from perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize, which everyone should strive for regardless of chosen profession. Still, for such a distinguished award, it seems as if an excessive amount of recipients across varying disciplines claim to have won a Pulitzer. This is in part due to the diverse categorizations eligible to receive the prize, spanning the arts from journalism to creative writing. In the field of journalism these categories include Public Service, Breaking News Reporting, Explanatory Reporting, Local Reporting, National Reporting, International Reporting, Feature Writing, Commentary, Criticism, Editorial Writing, Editorial Cartooning Breaking News Photography and Feature Photography. The remaining writing-based categories consist of Fiction, Drama, History, Biography or Autobiography, Poetry and General Non-Fiction. There is also a Pulitzer Prize for Music to recognize an artist who made a valuable music contribution during the previous calendar year, though these are generally composers as opposed to recording artists you might find on the top 40 hits chart.The prize, named for its founder Joseph Pulitzer, was first awarded in 1917, 6 years after Pulitzer’s death. Pulitzer is famous for founding the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, not to mention owning the New York World, a true heavyweight in the field of journalism in his time.If you are an accomplished author or journalist wondering why you’ve never won a Pulitzer, or perhaps you have found the last 240 some-odd words to be incredibly informative, well-written and award-worthy, then perhaps you would like to know a little more about the selection process. Pulitzers are awarded by an independent review board, though not all applicable works in the media are automatically considered, rather only works those that have been formally entered. A 50 fee is required for each entry, and each work can only be submitted for consideration in a maximum of two categories.