Pulitzer Prize officials have announced the 2026 winners in the arts categories, with Daniel Kraus winning the fiction prize for his novel Angel Down and Bess Wohl taking the drama award for her play Liberation.
Fiction Prize
Daniel Kraus, a 50-year-old author known for his work in fantasy, horror, and young adult literature, was honored for Angel Down, a World War I narrative that unfolds in a single, continuous sentence. The Pulitzer board described the book as "a stylistic tour-de-force that blends such genres as allegory, magical realism, and science fiction into a cohesive whole, told in a single sentence." Kraus has had a prolific career, including collaborations with filmmakers George Romero and Guillermo del Toro.
Drama Prize
Bess Wohl's Liberation received the drama prize. The play is a memory piece that revisits feminist consciousness-raising groups of the 1970s, bringing together second-wave feminists from diverse backgrounds to confront misogyny, internalized homophobia, domestic abuse, and gender roles. The narrative shifts between past and present, and notably, six actresses disrobe for the opening scene of Act 2. The win arrives just one day before the Tony Award nominations, where Liberation is anticipated to be named in the best new play category.
Other Winners
Several other awards were announced on Monday. Jill Lepore won the history prize for We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, and Amanda Vaill took the biography prize for Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution. Yiyun Li's Things in Nature Merely Grow, a stark account of the suicides of her two sons, won for memoir-autobiography. Brian Goldstone's There is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America was awarded the general nonfiction prize.
The poetry prize went to Juliana Spahr for Ars Poeticas, and the music award was given to Gabriela Lena Frank for Picaflor: A Future Myth, a symphonic work inspired by Andean legend and California wildfires.
Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy contributed to this report.
