Princeton professor Yiyun Li and journalist Natalie Obiko Pearson ’99 win Pulitzer Prizes

Yiyun Li, a professor of creative writing, and Natalie Obiko Pearson ’99, a senior investigative reporter for Bloomberg News, were announced as Pulitzer Prize winners on Monday.

Li won the prize in memoir or autobiography for her most recent book “Things in Nature Merely Grow.” The memoir navigates her life in the aftermath of the suicide of her son James Li ’27 in 2024, which occurred seven years after the suicide of her son Vincent. Pearson won the prize in illustrated reporting and commentary for her role in the Bloomberg graphic novel “trAPPed,” which follows a neurologist in India who is the victim of a sophisticated digital scam.

When her editor called her with the news, Li was at home getting her senior dog ready for a visit to the veterinarian. She was previously a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2024 for her short story collection “Wednesday’s Child.”

“I hope the book is a reminder that there are many ways to live with darkness and sadness without having to feel stuck,” Li wrote in a statement to The Daily Princetonian. When asked if she had any plans following her award, she wrote that she was “working on a few new projects.”

Pearson was asked to join a call with Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief John Micklethwait and other senior leadership, where she was informed of her win. 

“I was like, ‘Oh my god, are they calling me to tell me that my job is being taken by AI?’” Pearson said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “The internet was cutting in and out, but I caught the good news. Thankfully, I still have a job.”

“trAPPed,” created with visual artist Anand RK and freelance investigative journalist Suparna Sharma, is Bloomberg’s first graphic novel. Pearson described the project as a “completely new process” but noted that reporting remained a key aspect. “We call it a graphic novel, but everything in there has been reported,” she said.

“Nobody really understands the psychological tactics [of digital scams] and just how sophisticated they’ve gotten until you’ve been a victim of one yourself,” Pearson said. “When we were thinking through all that, my editors and I — we were all like, ‘Actually, a graphic novel may be the best medium for capturing the psychological terror of a scam.’”

Pearson was previously part of a Bloomberg team that was named a 2024 finalist in investigative reporting for its articles on the United States’ role in global gun violence. She is currently working in Japan, where she was raised, on her next project.

Additionally, Katie Kitamura ’99 and three other University faculty were named Pulitzer finalists.

Kitamura was a fiction finalist for “Audition,” a novel about an accomplished actress who meets a man who claims to be her son.

Kitamura could not speak with the ‘Prince’ in time for publication.

Visiting Lecturer in The Council of the Humanities Vinson Cunningham, the current McGraw Professor of Writing, was named a finalist in the criticism category. He was recognized for a series of essays he wrote for The New Yorker about culture and American life, with a focus on television. This year is Cunningham’s third consecutive year being named a finalist in criticism.

“When things like this happen to you, the feeling is to keep showing that you don’t take it for granted,” Cunningham told the ‘Prince.’ He is currently teaching JRN 441 / CWR 441: The McGraw Seminar in Writing — Writing People.

“It has been a unique opportunity to work out in my mind what is the confluence of American spectacle as we see it on TV and other forms of entertainment and the pretty dire circumstance of American politics,” he said of his work in film criticism.

Creative writing professor Patricia Smith was a finalist for the poetry prize. Her work, “The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems,” won the National Book Award in November and contains both new and old poems from across her career. She was also a 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry for her poetry collection “Incendiary Art.”

Smith found out she had been named a finalist when Erin West, program manager of creative writing, emailed her congratulations.

“I was like, ‘Oh that’s nice,’ but I didn’t know what it was for,” Smith told the ‘Prince.’

Smith was originally introduced to poetry through poetry slams. Though she shifted away from performance poetry, she still felt that “poetry was still something that [she] wanted to be involved with.”

“I want everybody to know that you don’t have to start on the top of the heap to win something like this,” Smith said while reflecting on her career. “You could start anywhere. As long as you keep going and you’re doing it for the right reason, things like this will happen.”

Smith noted that she had been working on a new novel, but took up a suggestion to write a memoir following her National Book Award win.

“I now have an agent for a memoir. I am going to a residency for six weeks this summer to get that started, and I think that will probably be ready for publication before the novel will be,” she said.

Visiting Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities Kevin Sack, a Ferris Professor of Journalism this semester, was named a finalist in general nonfiction for his book “Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church.” The book explores the 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by a white supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina, and its surrounding history.

“It was a real thrill and immensely gratifying to be one of the three finalists, and to have this book and the victims of this tragedy recognized in this way was incredibly meaningful,” Sack said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’

Sack covered the mass shooting in 2015 for The New York Times. He has previously won three Pulitzer Prizes as part of teams for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, including for his role in a group of New York Times articles published in 2000 about race in America. He is currently teaching JRN 260 / AAS 263: The Media in America — America in Black and White: Approaches to Telling the Story. 

“I hope readers will see this book, and books like it, as antidotes to the assault that we’re seeing on actual American history,” Sack said. “This history is both inglorious and inspiring at the same time, but it’s unquestionably real and actual history that should not be whitewashed, should not be diminished, should not be ignored or minimized in any way.”

Oliver Wu is the assistant News editor for the ‘Prince’ leading town coverage, focused on the Municipality of Princeton and beyond. He is from Stony Brook, N.Y. and can be reached at oliver.wu[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

Elizabeth Hu is a senior News writer, assistant head Copy editor, associate Data editor, staff Podcast producer, and contributing Features writer from Houston. She can be reached at exh[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

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