Columbia University recently announced the 2021 Pulitzer Prizes, awarded on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board. The Pulitzer Prizes were established by Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-American journalist and newspaper publisher, who left money to Columbia University upon his death in 1911. A portion of his bequest was used to found the School of Journalism in 1912 and to establish the Pulitzer Prizes, which were first awarded in 1917.

To accompany this week’s cover story, “All Booked,” by Stephanie Farrell, here are additional titles you may choose to add to your own summer reading list.

Also of note, a Special Award was given this year to Darnella Frazier “for courageously recording the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice.”

For more information on on this year’s Prize finalists and winners in these book categories as well as in journalism, drama and music, visit Pulitzer.org.

Fiction

The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich (Harper)

Finalists:

A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, by Daniel Mason (Little, Brown and Company)

Telephone, by Percival Everett (Graywolf Press)

Drama

The Hot Wing King, by Katori Hall

Finalists:

Circle Jerk, by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley

Stew, by Zora Howard

History

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, by Marcia Chatelain (Liveright/Norton)

Finalists:

The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America, by Eric Cervini (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, by Megan Kate Nelson (Scribner)

Biography

The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, by the late Les Payne and Tamara Payne (Liveright/Norton)

Finalists:

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, by Heather Clark (Alfred A. Knopf)

Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World, by Amy Stanley (Scribner)

Poetry

Postcolonial Love Poem, by Natalie Diaz (Graywolf Press)

Finalists:

A Treatise on Stars, by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (New Directions)

In the Lateness of the World, by Carolyn Forché (Penguin Press)

General Nonfiction

Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, by David Zucchino (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Finalists:

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, by Cathy Park Hong (One World/Random House)

Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country, by Sierra Crane Murdoch (Random House)