Pulitzer Prize Winning Books by Black Writers (includes Finalists)

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Pulitzer Prize Medal

Since 1917 the Pulitzer Prize has honored excellence in journalism and the arts. The first award was presented in 1918. The Prize recognizes American authors in six “Letters and Drama” categories; Biography/Autobiography, Fiction, General Non-Fiction, History, Poetry, and Drama (technically not a book award, but plays are all available as books and have been included here).

The first African-American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize in any of the above categories was Gwendolyn Brooks who received the award for poetry for her collection Annie Allen in 1950.

One Book was a Finalist or Winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 2026

Finalist – Poetry
I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always

I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always

by Douglas Kearney

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More Book Details
Imprint: Wave Books (Apr 08, 2025)
Poetry, Paperback, 128 pages
Publisher: Wave Books
ISBN: 9798891060128

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Book Description:
  • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
  • Winner of the American Book Award
  • Minnesota Book Award winner
  • A Best Book of 2025 by the New York Public Library

On the heels of Sho (winner, Griffin Poetry Prize) and Optic Subwoof (Pegasus Award in Poetry Criticism), Douglas Kearney s visual poetry masterpiece, I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always, pushes further into Kearney s long-time practices of performance typography, collaging pre-existing media sources to create singular, multiplicitous texts that defy neat categorization.

Through AfroFuturistic exploration of these techniques, Kearney presents a sustained consideration of precarious Black subjectivity, cultural production as self-defense, the transhistoric emancipatory logics of the preposition over, Anarcho-Black temporal disruption, and seriocomic meditations on the material and metaphysical nature of shadow. Engaging a rich history of visual poetics, I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always almost predicts its endurance as a visionary work of genius.

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