FIRST OF ALL, say “PYOO-litzer.” Okay, now you’re ready to learn a little about this coveted American award. In accordance with the will of the Hungarian-born journalist-turned-publisher Joseph Pulitzer, these awards are decided in secret deliberations each year and are announced by the president of Columbia University in April. Although the number of prizes—not to mention the cash sum that comes with each one—has increased since the first were awarded in 1917, the main categories have remained the same: Journalism, Letters, Drama, and Music. Show off your winning knowledge with this Pulitzer Prize quiz.
1. Who was the first woman to win a Pulitzer for a novel?
2. Three playwrights have each won three or more Pulitzers for Drama. Who are they?
3. Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls was nominated for the 1941 prize for a novel, but the judges that year chose not to award the prize at all. Which Hemingway novel did win twelve years later?
4. What graphic novel won a Special Citation in 1992, making it the only Pulitzer-winning comic book to date?
5. Why did Byron Price, director of the Office of Censorship, win a Special Award for Journalism in 1944?
6. What prize category, added in 1922, was first won by a work called “On the Road to Moscow”?
ANSWERS
1. Edith Wharton, for The Age of Innocence (1920), in 1921.
2. Eugene O’Neill (Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie, Strange Interlude, Long Day’s Journey into Night), Robert E. Sherwood (Idiot’s Delight, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, There Shall Be No Night), and Edward Albee (A Delicate Balance, Seascape, Three Tall Women).
3. The Old Man and the Sea (in 1953).
4. MAUS, by Art Spiegelman.
5. For creating the newspaper and radio censorship codes.
6. Editorial cartoon. Rollin Kirby was the cartoonist.