 "India-born poet Vijay Seshadri wins Pulitzer")
India-born poet Vijay Seshadri has won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in the poetry category for his witty and philosophical collection of poems while The Washington Post and The Guardian were awarded for their reports on America’s secret global surveillance programmes.
Seshadri won the Pulitzer, considered the most prestigious awards in journalism, for 3 Sections, a “compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless.”
The 98th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music, awarded on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board, were announced by the Columbia University.
The Post and US edition of The Guardian newspaper won the public service medal, which is for a “distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper or news site through the use of its journalistic resources, including the use of stories, editorials, cartoons, photographs, graphics, videos, databases, multimedia or interactive presentations or other visual material, a gold medal.”
The Boston Globe got the prize in the breaking news reporting category for its “exhaustive and empathetic” coverage of the Marathon bombings. The prize for fiction was awarded to The Goldfinch by American writer Donna Tartt for her “coming-of- age” novel about a grieving boy’s entanglement with a small famous painting that has eluded destruction. The award in the drama category went to The Flick by Annie Baker that focuses on three employees of a Massachusetts art-house movie theatre.
KNOW THE WINNER
* Vijay Seshadri was born in 1954
* Went to the US at the age of five
* His father taught chemistry at Ohio State University seshadri was a graduate student in Columbia’s PhD programme in Middle Eastern Languages and Literature
* His poetry collections include 3 Sections: Poems (Graywolf Press, 2013), The Long Meadow (Graywolf Press, 2004) and Wild Kingdom (1996)
* Seshadri has received grants from New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for Arts
* He has been awarded The Paris Review’s Bernard F Conners Long Poem Prize and the MacDowell Colony’s Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement
* He currently teaches poetry and non-fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College, New York
* He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son
OTHER INDIA-ORIGIN WINNERS
Gobind Behari lal (1937)
A science editor, was awarded the Pulitzer in 1937, for reporting for his coverage of science at the tercentenary of Harvard University
Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
Indian-American author got the Pulitzer for fiction for her collection of stories, Interpreters of Maladies
Geeta Anand (2003)
Investigative reporter and feature writer for the Wall Street Journal, got the award for “clear, concise and comprehensive stories that illuminated the roots, significance and impact of corporate scandals in America”
Siddhartha Mukherjee (2011)
Indian-American physician book on cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, won the Pulitzer Prize in the general non-fiction category
Seshadri won the Pulitzer, considered the most prestigious awards in journalism, for 3 Sections, a “compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless.”
The 98th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music, awarded on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board, were announced by the Columbia University.
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A Columbia University alumnus, Seshadri, 60, would receive $10,000. Born in Bangalore in 1954, Seshadri came to the US at the age of five and grew up in Columbus, Ohio. He became the fifth person of India-origin to bag the prize.
The Post and US edition of The Guardian newspaper won the public service medal, which is for a “distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper or news site through the use of its journalistic resources, including the use of stories, editorials, cartoons, photographs, graphics, videos, databases, multimedia or interactive presentations or other visual material, a gold medal.”
The Boston Globe got the prize in the breaking news reporting category for its “exhaustive and empathetic” coverage of the Marathon bombings. The prize for fiction was awarded to The Goldfinch by American writer Donna Tartt for her “coming-of- age” novel about a grieving boy’s entanglement with a small famous painting that has eluded destruction. The award in the drama category went to The Flick by Annie Baker that focuses on three employees of a Massachusetts art-house movie theatre.
KNOW THE WINNER
* Vijay Seshadri was born in 1954
* Went to the US at the age of five
* His father taught chemistry at Ohio State University seshadri was a graduate student in Columbia’s PhD programme in Middle Eastern Languages and Literature
* His poetry collections include 3 Sections: Poems (Graywolf Press, 2013), The Long Meadow (Graywolf Press, 2004) and Wild Kingdom (1996)
* Seshadri has received grants from New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for Arts
* He has been awarded The Paris Review’s Bernard F Conners Long Poem Prize and the MacDowell Colony’s Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement
* He currently teaches poetry and non-fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College, New York
* He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son
OTHER INDIA-ORIGIN WINNERS
Gobind Behari lal (1937)
A science editor, was awarded the Pulitzer in 1937, for reporting for his coverage of science at the tercentenary of Harvard University
Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
Indian-American author got the Pulitzer for fiction for her collection of stories, Interpreters of Maladies
Geeta Anand (2003)
Investigative reporter and feature writer for the Wall Street Journal, got the award for “clear, concise and comprehensive stories that illuminated the roots, significance and impact of corporate scandals in America”
Siddhartha Mukherjee (2011)
Indian-American physician book on cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, won the Pulitzer Prize in the general non-fiction category