Guess Who Won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

The 2025 Pulitzer Prize Winners

The winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday. You can watch the livestream on YouTube, but if you just want to know which books were awarded, I gotchu. In the History category, we had a tie! Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal and Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black both won the award. In Biography, Jason Roberts scored the win for Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life. A graphic memoir won in the Memoir category–Tessa Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir, which “traces the reverberations of Chinese history across three generations of women in her family” sounds like something I need to add to my TBR. In Poetry, the win went to New and Selected Poems by former New York poet laureate Marie Howe. General Nonfiction went to To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans. And in my most anticipated category, Fiction, the win went to James by Percival Everett and anything else would not have made sense to me. Congratulations to all of this year’s winners, and check out the full list here.

More Awards But Make it Mystery (and Low on Rep)

ICYMI, the Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of this year’s Edgar Allan Poe Awards “honoring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction, and television published or produced in 2024.” The In Crowd by Charlotte Vassell won for Best Novel, Sulari Gentill won the The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award for The Mystery Writer, and The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson won for Best Fact Crime, to name a few. Firstly, congratulations to all of the winners. Secondly, the winners list is not diverse. I did a brief look-back through the years and it seems like the dearth of representation is not new and, knowing how many great BIPOC mystery books we have, I find myself incredibly disappointed. See for yourself.

You Can Finally Purchase a Kindle Book the Easy Way

TIL that Apple’s commission rules created restrictions that made the simple act of purchasing an ebook that much more difficult. Well, an Epic Games v. Apple ruling is changing the game (for now), and Kindle has made a timely update to its iOS app to streamline that purchasing process. Previously, Apple disallowed apps from including links providing alternative ways to purchase stuff, all the while reaping a cool 30% on in-app purchases and a 27% tax on alternative payment methods. The Epic Games v. Apple ruling struck down that 27% tax and, lo and behold, you’ll now find a “Get Book” button on the Kindle app. Read all about it at The Verge.

The Latest from the Institute of Museum and Library Services

Kelly Jensen is reporting updates on the embattled IMLS. Here’s a snippet, but be sure to read the whole story to stay informed about the fate of this important institution:

It’s been a month and a half since the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) was ransacked by the Department of Government Efficiency. In that time, the only government agency dedicated to public libraries and museums has been turned into a propaganda machine, with a distinct focus on where and how the agency will become a leading vehicle in this administration’s plans for America 250. IMLS staff members were fired and funding for libraries nationwide was revoked. It was a complete gutting.