Percival Everett’s 2024 novel James continues to earn widespread acclaim. After being named a Booker Prize finalist and winning both the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction, Everett has added the 2025 Pulitzer Prize.
The Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California was announced as a Pulitzer Prize winner on May 5. Everett’s powerful novel, James, serves as a reimagining of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told through the eyes of Jim, Huck’s enslaved companion.
The Pulitzer Prize stands as a defining moment in Everett’s stellar literary career, which also includes his novel Erasure (2001), which inspired the Academy Award-winning film American Fiction. His other works include I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), and The Trees (2021), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize.
The prestigious Pulitzer Prize recognizes excellence in journalism, literature, drama, and music. The 2025 winners were honored at a ceremony opened by Administrator Marjorie Miller, who started the event by addressing the ongoing challenges facing the media and publishing industries in the United States.
“ Atop years of severe financial pressures and layoffs, amid the dangers of covering wars and natural disasters, journalists and writers now face additional threats in the form of legal harassment, the banning of books, and attacks on their work and legitimacy. These efforts are meant to silence, criticism, to edit or rewrite history,” Miller said.
She added that this year’s finalists and winners entailed “ courageous reporting and impactful storytelling” as well as “ authors and composers who stand up for their values.”
Anoher notable Pulitzer Prize winners this year was Ann Telnaes, the former Washington Post cartoonist who resigned earlier after her editor declined to publish a satirical cartoon that mocked media and tech leaders’ allegiance to President Donald Trump.
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