Alumni win two Pulitzers

Three alumni — including a husband-and-wife team — were awarded Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, winning $10,000 for their books on 20th century art and 18th century history.

Mark Stevens '73 and Annalyn Swan '73 — both former editors of The Daily Princetonian — were honored for "de Kooning: An American Master," a biographical work about the life and art of the Abstract Expressionist painter Willem de Kooning. Swan is also a trustee of the 'Prince.'

David Hackett Fischer '58 won the Pulitzer Prize in history for "Washington's Crossing," a chronicle of the persistence of George Washington and his army during the tough first winter of the American Revolution.

Stevens and Swan worked on their book for more than a decade before it was published. "We were delighted to win," Stevens said. "[We're] very happy that a book about an artist won [the Pulitzer for biography] because it's usually books about statesmen and generals that win."

They decided to research de Kooning because "we were very interested in de Kooning as an artist and as an American story," Swan said.

"De Kooning's period — the 1950s — was an important period in the art world because it was the first time that American art took precedent over French art," Stevens added.

Though de Kooning's wife, Elaine, was another significant figure in the mid-century New York art scene, they were not an artistic team as Stevens and Swan were when writing their book.

But "it is interesting with someone like de Kooning to have a man and woman involved [in the project]," Stevens said. "His art was often involved with the relations between men and women . . . some people think he's a misogynist and doesn't like women."

De Kooning is best known for the several series of abstracted women he painted over the course of his career and "his great muse was indeed women," Swan said.

Swan said she was "euphoric" about winning the prize. Last month, Swan and Stevens won the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography.

The couple said they had not thought about what to do with the $10,000 of prize money they will be awarded in May at a ceremony in Columbia University's Low Library. But, Stevens added, "We'll probably pay the phone bill and the AOL bill for about three months."

Fischer, a Brandeis University professor, told the Associated Press his book on George Washington was part of a recent trend of returning to the stories of major historical figures from a modern viewpoint.

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"More or less continuously now, a book or several books about the founders are on bestseller lists," he said. "And I think my book is part of that most recent surge."

He could not be reached for comment Monday night.

A fourth alum and former 'Prince' managing editor, Griffin Witte '00, contributed to the prizewinning book "Ghost Wars" by journalist Steve Coll.

Witte worked for former Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll as a research assistant when Coll wrote "Ghost Wars," the winner for general nonfiction. Witte said he "did a bit of everything," including interviewing and editing, while working on the book, which follows the history of the Central Intelligence Agency, Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden from the 1979 Soviet invasion through Sept. 10, 2001.

Witte dropped out of graduate school at Columbia after another Post reporter offered him the opportunity to work on a book about Sept. 11 themes. Witte met the reporter when he came to Princeton as a guest lecturer for a Council of the Humanities journalism class Witte's senior year.

While working on the book Witte went to Afghanistan, which was "a heck of a lot of fun from a reporting perspective," he said. The lack of Internet and telephones meant that reporters "basically [drove] around Kabul and ask[ed] people if they had heard of the people" he needed to interview.