Journalism professors Vinson Cunningham and Kevin Sack were named finalists for the 2026 Pulitzer Prizes. Cunningham was named a finalist for criticism; Sack was named a finalist for general nonfiction. The annual awards honor “excellence in journalism, arts, and letters.”
Cunningham is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the co-host of the magazine’s weekly arts and culture podcast, Critics at Large. He is a visiting lecturer in the Humanities Council and McGraw Professor of Writing in the Program in Journalism. Cunningham will return next year for a third year in the program to teach an undergraduate seminar on arts and culture criticism.
In the finalist citation, the Pulitzer Prize Board recognized Cunningham’s “sophisticated, accessible essays on the media, with an emphasis on television, that address shifts in culture, politics and American life with clear-eyed authority.”
Sack is a veteran journalist and author who has written broadly about national affairs for more than four decades. He is a visiting lecturer in the Humanities Council and Ferris Professor of Writing the Program in Journalism. His new book, “Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church, was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2025 by The New York Times.
The prize committee praised “Mother Emanuel” as a “sensitive exploration of a church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina,” and “a rigorously researched and reported story of faith, African American institutions, the legacy of slavery and what remains after devastating losses.”
Princeton professor Yiyun Li (Lewis Center for the Arts) won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for memoir for her 2025 book “Things in Nature Merely Grow.”
