After missing out on the National Book Award, Anthony Doerr was among those book authors winning Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, marking the second year in a row (after Donna Tartt’s THE GOLDFINCH) the Pulitzer went with a commercially successful title as the winner. Doerr told USA Today (from Paris, where he is currently on tour) he “can barely absorb any of it,” speculating that his novel resonates in our “time of overabundance” because “we are compelled by stories that remind us of our blessings, that remind us that not that long ago whole countries were struggling to feed their populations.” Doerr told the paper “he was going to celebrate by finishing his bowl of ice cream, and then go for a walk and see if he could buy a bottle of Champagne.” Scribner said it is going back to press for another 100,000 copies (a paperback edition will not appear for more than a year.)
Fiction
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
Finalists:
Let Me Be Frank with You by Richard Ford (Ecco)
The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami (Pantheon)
Lovely, Dark & Deep by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)
General Nonfiction
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert (Henry Holt)
Finalists:
No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal (Metropolitan)
Age of Ambition by Evan Osnos (FSG)
History
Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn (Hill and Wang)
Finalists:
Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert (Knopf)
An Empire on the Edge by Nick Bunker (Knopf)
Biography or Autobiography
The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer (Random House)
Finalists:
Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism by Thomas Brothers (Norton)
Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 by Stephen Kotkin (Penguin Press)
Poetry
Digest by Gregory Pardlo (Four Way Books)
Finalists:
Reel to Reel by Alan Shapiro (University of Chicago Press)
Compass Rose by Arthur Sze (Copper Canyon Press)
Drama
Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis
Separately, in other awards news, Emily Bitto won Australia’s 2015 Stella Prize for her debut novel The Strays, issued by small independent publisher Affirm.