Joshua Cohen, the late Winfred Rembert win arts Pulitzers

NEW YORK (AP) — Joshua Cohen’s “The Netanyahus,” a comic and rigorous campus novel based on the true story of the father of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeking a job in academia, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Many of the winners in the arts Monday were explorations of race and class, in the past and the present. Winners were also announced in several categories honoring journalism.

James Ijames’ “Fat Ham,” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” set at a Black family’s barbecue in the modern South, received the Pulitzer for drama. The late artist Winfred Rembert won in biography for “Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South,” as told to Erin I. Kelly. Rembert, who survived years in prison and a near-lynching in rural Georgia in the 1960s, died last year at age 75.

Andrea Elliott’s “Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City,” which builds upon her New York Times investigative series about a homeless Black girl from Brooklyn, received a Pulitzer for general nonfiction. Elliott’s book has already won the Gotham Prize for outstanding work about New York City.

Two prizes were awarded Monday in history: Nicole Eustace’s “Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America” and Ada Ferrer’s “Cuba: An American History,” which traces the centuries-long relationship between U.S. and its Southern neighbor.

Diane Seuss won in poetry for “frank: sonnets” and the music award was given to Raven Chacon for his composition for organ and ensemble, “Voiceless Mass.” Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from the Navajo Nation.

Chacon’s work is currently on display at the Whitney Biennial, which is inspired by protestors at the Oceti Sakowin near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota.

His 2020 opera, “Sweet Land,” co-composed with Du Yun, was performed outdoors at the Los Angeles State Historic Park earned critical praise for its revisionist telling of American history using different narratives simultaneously. The opera was awarded best opera by the Music Critics Association of North America for 2021.

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AP Entertainment Writers Kristin Hall and Mark Kennedy contributed to this report.

Hillel Italie, The Associated Press