The 2010 Pulitzer Prizes were announced today, and the winners included a few surprises (although sadly, still no recognition for critic extraordinaire Jay Sherman). The prize for fiction went to Paul Harding’s Tinkers, a debut novel about a clock repairman recalling his childhood on his deathbed. The book comes from Bellevue Literary Press, a nonprofit publisher operating out of a tiny office at New York University’s School of Medicine since 2005.
The Pulitzers for history and biography went to, respectively, Liaquat Ahamed’s Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, about the Great Depression and T.J. Stiles’ robber-baron bio The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Here’s the full list of those who won for books:
Fiction: Tinkers by Paul Harding
Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout
History: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
General Nonfiction: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman
Biography: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles
not to be picky, but Random House did win 2 of them.. but yay for Bellevue!
I am glad that a book from a small press got some recognition. I would love to see Shel Life do some more blogs about small presses.
Your title, “Move over Random House,” is almost prescient, since Harding has now signed with RH to publish his next two novels. I can’t wait to read them. Tin kers is a masterpiece.
And as a student of Paul’s, let me just saw no one could have deserved the award more. It took 5 years for anyone to show any interest in that book. Nice to see people are interested now.
I’m a sucker for the gilded age. This one’s good; I have it on the Kindle too. It reads well. It’s a bio, of course, and it opens up with a court room scene that I couldn’t help but think of Howard Hughes, as I skimmed through those first pages. This one won a Pulitzer, and he’s made the rounds, hitting various NPR shows, doing readings, etc. In other words, it isn’t an independent offering.