‘This American Life’ Wins First-Ever Pulitzer For Audio Journalism

“In partnership with the Los Angeles Times and Vice News, This American Life won for an episode called ‘The Out Crowd’ — which illuminated the personal impact of the Trump Administration’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. In the episode, listeners hear from asylum seekers in a refugee camp in Mexico just across the border, as well as the officers who sent them there. In fact, many of the U.S. asylum officers felt awful about sending the migrants back to Mexico, as Los Angeles Times reporter Molly O’Toole learned.” – Poynter

‘The Central Park Five’ By Anthony Davis Wins Pulitzer Prize For Music

“[The work,] which debuted last June at Long Beach Opera, … chronicles the racially and politically charged New York trial and conviction of one Latino teenager and four black teens — who were later all exonerated and freed — in the 1989 rape [and beating] of a young white female investment banker in Central Park.” – The San Diego Union-Tribune

‘A Strange Loop’ By Michael R. Jackson Wins Pulitzer Prize For Drama

“Jackson’s win marks the first time the committee has awarded a black writer for a musical. … That’s particularly poignant given the material itself: a discursive meta-tale about a young, gay, black musical theater writer, who’s writing a musical about a young, gay, black musical theater writer, and so on down the rabbit hole.” – Forbes

Colson Whitehead, Jericho Brown, Benjamin Moser, W. Caleb McDaniel, Anne Boyer, Greg Grandin Win Literary Pulitzers

Whitehead received his second fiction Pulitzer for The Nickel Boys; Brown’s The Tradition took poetry honors; the biography prize went to Moser’s Sontag: Her Life and Work; McDaniel’s Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America took the history category; the general nonfiction prize was shared by Boyer for The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care and Grandin for The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. – Los Angeles Times

L.A. Times Art Critic Christopher Knight Wins Pulitzer Prize

“The jury said Knight’s work demonstrated ‘extraordinary community service by a critic’ through the application of ‘his expertise and enterprise to critique a proposed overhaul of the L.A. County Museum of Art and its effect on the institution’s mission.’ … [The other finalists were] Justin Davidson of New York magazine, nominated in part for his writing on the Hudson Yards development in New York, and Soraya Nadia McDonald of The Undefeated, honored for her work exploring the intersection of film, theater, and race.” (Davidson has already won the criticism Pulitzer, in 2002 for classical music writing at Newsday.) – Artnet

Sotheby’s Reports $71.2m Loss & “Substantial Doubt” About Continuing; Major June Sales Planned

Sotheby’s new leaders, who took the publicly traded company private, are understandably eager to reopen their New York saleroom for post-pandemic business. Having disclosed a $71.2-million net loss in its 2019 Annual Report (compared to net income of $108.6 million the previous year), the company could use a life-sustaining income infusion. – Lee Rosenbaum

Stunt Performers Still Have Few Protections Against Accidents And Little Recourse

Olivia Jackson was gravely injured on a Resident Evil set in South Africa in 2015. But who should pay?. “Jackson’s ordeal highlights the vulnerabilities of performers on sets, especially on international productions, where it can be challenging to recover damages for injuries. Although film and TV-related fatalities have declined since the 1980s and 1990s, the number of catastrophic injuries has increased in recent years as production has expanded globally.” – Los Angeles Times

The Writers Van Gogh Liked To Read Included Charles Dickens And Harriet Beecher Stowe

In the category of things some of us hadn’t thought enough about before this moment: “Vincent was an avid and multilingual reader, a man who could not do without books. In his brief life he devoured hundreds of them in four languages, spanning centuries of art and literature. Throughout his life, his reading habits reflected his various personae—art dealer, preacher, painter—and were informed by his desire to learn, discuss, and find his own way to be of service to humanity.” – LitHub