🏆 The books that won the Pulitzers

We've finally tied a bow on the 2025 book award season.

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May 5, 2026 | View Online | Join All Access | Listen

🍿 Adaptations? For spring? Groundbreaking. It was a big weekend for books on screen, as The Devil Wears Prada 2 blew past box office predictions to rake in $233 million worldwide and Wuthering Heights hit streaming. If you’re thinking about picking up Brontë’s novel now that you’ve seen Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie slurp their way around the moors, we’ve got a Zero to Well-Read episode for you.

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THE HEADLINE

The winners of the 2026 Pulitzer Prizes

A mere 124 days into 2026, we finally tied a bow on the 2025 book award season. The Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday in a ceremony live-streamed from Columbia University.

Before announcing the winners, Administrator Marjorie Miller reiterated the Pulitzers’ full-throated commitment to and support for the First Amendment and a free press:

Let me begin by saying what we shouldn’t have to say: the Pulitzer Prizes support the First Amendment. We believe in access to government institutions and an independent press. We stand for civil discourse and against censorship. Unfortunately, this bears repeating now, as media access to the White House and Pentagon is restricted, free speech is challenged in the streets, and the President of the United States has filed lawsuits for billions of dollars for defamation and malice against multiple print and broadcast media.

Never forget that books and reading have always been political, folks.

Here are the books that won the 2026 Pulitzer Prizes:

Fiction: Angel Down by Daniel Kraus

General Nonfiction: There is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone

Memoir and Autobiography: Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

History: We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore

Biography: Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution by Amanda Vaill

Poetry: Ars Poeticas by Juliana Spahr

🏆 See the full list of Pulitzer winners and the finalists in all categories.

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NEW RELEASES

The company we keep

Community looms large in this week’s new releases, and there’s something for every kind of reader.

Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, returns after 17 years with The Calamity Club , a hefty story (656 pages!) about scrappy women fighting to take control of their hardscrabble lives.

Booker Prize winner Douglas Stuart delivers John of John, one of the most highly anticipated novels of the year, about a young man who returns to his home in the Hebrides islands to reckon with the tension between his family’s expectations and his own desires.

And ’Pemi Aguda, whose short story collection Ghostroots was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2024, arrives with a debut novel that blends fable, folklore, and futuristic vision. I’ve just finished reading it, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Also hitting shelves:

✊🏾 One of the originators of critical race theory—and the person who introduced the concept of intersectionality—tells her personal story

🍴 A groundbreaking Southern cookbook gets a gorgeous 50th anniversary edition

🔪 One of the most successful crime fiction authors of our time turns her pen on her own life

🤖 Martha Wells’s beloved Murderbot has new adventures

✅ Constraints are good, actually, and David Epstein is here to tell you why

📚 See more of the month’s most exciting new releases.

TOGETHER WITH FURY BOUND

Revenge demands sacrifice.

Fury Bound , the steamy second book in Sable Sorensen’s The Wolves of Ruin series, picks up with Meryn Cooper as queen and the kingdom already falling apart. With enemies closing in and generations of lies unraveling, her most unlikely ally is Stark Therion, the dark, dangerous Alpha she thought despised her. His loyalty is unshakeable. His presence is something else entirely.

TIME CAPSULE

A moment for millennial-core YA

Do you remember what it was like to feel infinite? If you’re among the more than 3 million readers for whom The Perks of Being a Wallflower was a core teenage text, you’ve probably got goosebumps already.

Stephen Chbosky was an unknown writer when MTV Books (yes, MTV used to have an imprint!) published his debut novel about a lonely boy named Charlie struggling to navigate the rocky landscapes of adolescence, friendship, family dynamics, and mental illness.

Since its publication in 1999, Perks has provided multiple generations of teenage outsiders with assurance that they’re not alone. It has inspired countless mix tapes and playlists. And it has been a frequent target of book banning and censorship attempts, precisely because its content resonates so powerfully with young readers.

This small book has made a big impression on readers for nearly 30 years. Find out why on a nostalgia-fueled episode of Zero to Well-Read.

FAIRY TALES

What would Hans Christian Andersen think of how his stories have transformed?

photo credit: Frances F. Denny.

Francine Prose is the author of Five Weeks in the Country , out today from Harper. Below, she discusses how Hans Christian Andersen’s work has transformed over the years, and what he might think of the Disney-fied versions of his strange, dark fairy tales.

Writing a novel about the excruciatingly awkward yet transcendent visit that Hans Christian Andersen made to Charles Dickens in the summer of 1857, I’ve thought a lot about Andersen and his work. Specifically, I’ve wondered what he would have made of the way in which his stories have been reconfigured by Disney—sweetened up with happy endings and catchy songs hugely popular with grade-school choruses.

An intensely romantic, apparently gay man who may well have died a virgin, Andersen might have enjoyed seeing those cartoon handsome princes with their massive jaws and vaguely gob-smacked expressions. But he might not even have realized that Frozen was based on his “The Snow Queen,” among the most beautiful, strange, and bizarrely erotic of his stories. The beautiful, frigid Snow Queen—who kidnaps little Kai, wraps him in her ermine blankets and whisks him off in her sleigh, covers him with icy kisses and makes him sleep in her bed—could hardly have generated a fraction of the volume of merch that Disney’s little heroine, Elsa, sold. And it’s probably better that the kids not actually know that Andersen’s original “Little Mermaid” features ugly amputations.

It’s tempting to say that Andersen would have been upset by the Disneyfied versions of his magical fairy tales—but who knows? Who can speak for someone else? The writer I imagined and tried to turn into a character wants, more than anything, to be loved.

Dead for more than a hundred and fifty years, Andersen can’t possibly care what we say about him, or what is done to his work. He has no descendants to argue over its purchase price and royalties. So maybe part of why I wrote the novel was to show who I imagine he was, how he acted, what he said, what he did, and why his fairy tales are so great.

TOGETHER WITH VAULT COMICS

Percy Jackson fans, meet your next obsession.​

Travis Muñoz and the Fire of the Aztecs is an action-packed middle grade graphic novel rooted in Aztec mythology and Mexican folklore, from an all-Latin creative team: writer and educator Mark Stack, artist Anne Marcano, and Emmy-winning actor Karla Souza.

"There’s a void in the world of children’s fantasy books — especially for kids growing up Mexican-American and hungry to see themselves in the stories they love. This book fills that void." —Karla Souza

BESTSELLERS

Independent bookstores’ bestselling audiobooks of April

Patrons of indie bookstores can support the stories they love even while they buy audiobooks, thanks to Libro.fm. Here are Libro.fm’s best-selling audiobooks of April 2026.

Fiction:

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, narrated by Rebecca Lowman

This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum, narrated by Julia Whelan & Sean Patrick Hopkins

Theo of Golden by Alan Levi, narrated by David Morse

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Vol. 1 by Beth Brower, narrated by Genevieve Gaunt

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, multiple narrators

Non-Fiction:

Famesick by Lena Dunham, narrated by Lena Dunham

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe, narrated by Patrick Radden Keefe

Strangers by Belle Burden, narrated by Belle Burden

All About Love by bell hooks, narrated by January LaVoy

Cultish by Amanda Montell, narrated by Ann Marie Gideon

AUTHOR RECOMMENDATIONS

3 books that sparked my obsession with character

Vincent Yu is the author of Seek Immediate Shelter, out today from Flatiron Books. Below, he discusses three books that influenced his writing.

My debut novel, Seek Immediate Shelter , follows a group of vastly different characters, all living in the same town, who simultaneously receive a ballistic missile alert. Their reactions range from disbelief, to panic, to relief, to even hope.When a follow-up announcement is released, 18 minutes later, declaring the alert to be a false alarm, these same people must come to terms with how they behaved and reconcile their own identities accordingly.

I’ve always been fascinated by fiction as a pressure cooker for character development. Below are a few novels whose knotty characters deepened my own conception of the vividness with which human beings can be rendered from completely fictional circumstances.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen: Each of the five Lamberts in Franzen’s masterpiece seems pulled straight from real life, although Gary, the hilariously misanthropic, alcoholic, materialistic, well-meaning oldest child is my favorite. His contradictions and insecurities abound—in particular, his refusal to accept his own clinical depression. But as the novel progresses, it becomes clear he’s never quite moved on from being the little boy who wanted to feel special, especially to his parents.

The Collective by Don Lee : This novel’s brilliant, selfish, enigmatic Joshua Yoon provided my first (personal) encounter with an Asian American character who was fundamentally unlikable. Joshua is more than simply flawed; he is, among other things, an egomaniac, a control freak, a misogynist. He is a forceful reaction to Asian American male stereotypes—ironic, since his artistic mantra centers overwhelmingly on capitalizing upon his identity. Because he’s described through the viewpoint of a more sensible and relatable sidekick, Joshua’s behavior is never fully understood, nor is it condoned, which suits him.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout: The titular character in this gorgeous book is, from the outside, merely a retired teacher who spent her entire life in a small seaside town in Maine. Strout, however, manages to grant this unassuming character an interiority expansive and compelling enough to create high-stakes drama from ostensibly small, quiet moments. It’s a literary miracle.

TOGETHER WITH BOOK RIOT ALL ACCESS

Unlock the best of the book world with Book Riot All Access. Gain expert perspective with our deep dives, find your next favorite book via the New Release Index, and stay motivated on the Read Harder Challenge alongside fellow bibliophiles. Enhance your reading life— join All Access today!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Catherynne M. Valente, born May 5, 1979

Did you know? Catherynne M. Valente’s mother read her Plato’s Republic as a bedtime story.

CRITICAL LINKING

You are now free to roam about the internet

🗳️ Fight for democracy with help from five books about the Voting Rights Act.

🥰 Swoon over the best new romances of May.

📖 Read about how an author’s Buddhist exorcism inspired his new novel.

🗣️ Chat with us about what’s on your May TBR and what you finished in April!

📺 Queue up the best literary adaptations to stream in May.

END NOTES

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Jeff O’Neal, and Danika Ellis. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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