2005 PULITZER PRIZES for FICTION and POETRY

CONGRATULATIONS to Marilynne Robinson for winning the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her long-awaited second novel Gilead (2004), an elegiac and spiritual meditation (in the form of a long letter) between John Ames, an elderly, dying preacher, and the son he will never see grow up, in the dry, dusty prairie town of Gilead, Iowa, “a dogged little outpost in the sand hills, within striking distance of Kansas”. Robinson's début novel, Housekeeping (1981), a haunting, poetic evocation of existential solitude set against the backdrop of rural Idaho in the mid-1900s, is regarded by many as a modern American classic. (Gilead is also the winner of the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and has been shortlisted for the 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.) With Gilead, “a masterly study of the dying of the light,” Robinson has produced another modern American classic.

Congratulations also to Ted Kooser for winning the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Delights & Shadows (2004), an understated collection of rural and small-town Americana.

Both books were clearly some of the literary highlights of 2004.

Bibliography
ROBINSON Marilynne [1943-] Novelist, essayist. Born Marilynne Summers in Sandpoint, Idaho. NOVELS Gilead (2004: winner of the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; shortlisted for the 2005 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction); Housekeeping (1981: winner of the 1981 PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction; shortlisted for the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1982 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction) NONFICTION The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998: awarded the PEN/Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay); Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution (1989: shortlisted for the 1989 National Book Award for Nonfiction)

KOOSER Ted [1939-] Poet. Born in Ames, Iowa. POETRY Delights & Shadows (2004: winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry); Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry (with Jim Harrison) (2003); Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison (2000: winner of the 2001 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry); Weather Central (1994); One World at a Time (1985); Sure Signs (1980); Not Coming to Be Barked At (1976) NONFICTION The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets (2005); Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (2002: winner of the 2003 Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction); Riding with Colonel Carter: An Essay and Two Poems (1999); The Blizzard Voices (1986)