Three LGBT+ Winners Have Been Awarded a Pulitzer Prize this Year
Three LGBT luminaries have been won prizes for their literary and journalistic feats in this year’s Pulitzer Prize.
The 2018 Pulitzer Prize winners in 14 journalism and seven letters, drama and music categories were announced on Monday.
Journalist Ronan Farrow, novelist Andrew Sean Greer and poet Frank Bidart have had their work honoured this year by the highly coveted prize-givers, as well as The Washington Post for its work exposing anti-LGBT senator and alleged sexual predator Roy Moore.
Farrow, who revealed this month that he is a “member of the LGBT” community, has received a public service award for his work in The New Yorker exposing allegations of sexual misconduct against movie producer Harvey Weinstein.
The publication shared the prize with The New York Times for their joint coverage of the Weinstein scandal.
The Washington Post received the body’s investigative prize for their work in exposing the alleged sexually misconduct of Moore, the Republican candidate for last October’s special senate election in Alabama.
Andrew Sean Greer, who identifies as gay, won the Pulitzer prize for fition with his novel Less, which has been described by judges as “a generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love.”
Meanwhile, Farrow said last week that “being part of the LGBT community” supported and “elevated” his reporting on the Weinstein saga.
“Being a part of the LGBT community, which recognised that reporting I was doing early on and elevated it, and has been such a stalwart source of support through the sexual assault reporting I did involving survivors who felt equally invisible — that has been an incredible source of strength for me,” said Farrow.
“LGBT people are some of the bravest and most potent change agents and leaders I have encountered, and the most forceful defenders of the vulnerable and voiceless, because they know what it’s like to be there.”
Poet Bidart, who is also gay, was honoured for his poetry. Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 has been described by judges as “a volume of unyielding ambition and remarkable scope that mixes long dramatic poems with short elliptical lyrics, building on classical mythology and reinventing forms of desires that defy societal norms.”
Kendrick Lamar also scooped the music prize for album DAMN., making him the first artist to win the prestigious accolade who is not part of the jazz or classical genre.