Dear Pulitzer Prizes for Literature:
We, the undersigned, are readers and lovers of literature, undocumented writers, first- and second-generation immigrants, Native and Black writers, past winners and honorees of Pulitzer prizes and major national awards. We are supremely grateful for the decades’ work the Pulitzer has done to uplift books and authors.
From this place of gratitude, and in hopes to speak to your alignment with the past work you have done, we implore you to update your requirements for the Pulitzer Prize to include the work of our peers who through accidents of geography, of violence perpetrated on our lands, and the personal familial reckonings with survival, have come to have or have been born into a mixed or undocumented status.
We were dismayed to learn, through Javier Zamora’s op-ed piece, It’s Time for the Pulitzer Prize for Literature to Accept Noncitizens, that in the categories of Fiction, Biography, Memoir, Poetry, and General Nonfiction, the Pulitzer Prize requires authors to be United States citizens.
Along the way of awarding new work, the Pulitzer has a hand, and an opportunity, in creating a new canon. Works that are honored by a prize and nomination are not only honored momentarily, but they become part of our canonical reading.
We, the undersigned, believe that we have a duty to ask what constitutes the literature of a nation, and in asking this question, we believe it is essential to veer away from the definitions the State provides as to what it thinks constitutes U.S. selfhood.
Whether undocumented writers are writing about the border or not, their voices are quintessentially part of what it means to belong and struggle to belong in this and to this nation.
In an increasingly nativistic world, we look to the Pulitzer to continue to guide us, and we hope you will see your way to changing the prize requirements.
We write to you with dismay and with admiration and hope.
Thank you for considering and listening.
*
Elmaz Abinader, author of This House My Bones
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain Gang All Stars
Rafael Agustín, author of Illegally Yours
Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr
Daniel Alarcon, author of At Night We Walk in Circles
Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of Woman of Light
Fatimah Asghar, author of When We Were Sisters
Peter Balakian, Pulitzer Prize winner of Ozone Journal
Laura van den Berg, author of I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
Jamel Brinkley, author of Witness
Kate Brody, author of Rabbit Hole
Lina Maria Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas, author of Don’t Come Back
Alejandra Campoverdi, author of First Gen: A Memoir
Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River
Wiley Cash, author of A Land More Kind Than Home
Elaine Castillo, author of America Is Not the Heart and How To Read Now
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, author of Children of the Land
May-lee Chai, author of Useful Phrases for Immigrants: Stories
Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers
Vanessa Chan, author of The Storm We Made
Rita Chang-Eppig, author of Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea
Kirstin Chen, author of Counterfeit
Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
Gina Chung, author of Sea Change
Sandra Cisneros, author of Woman Without Shame, House on Mango Street
Bill Clegg
Matthew Cooperman, author of Wonder About The Anonymous Grizzly
Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana
Jill Damatac, author of Dirty Kitchen
Robin Davidson, author of Mrs. Schmetterling
Yohanca Delgado, Stegner Fellow
Jaquira Díaz, author of Ordinary Girls
Firoozeh Dumas, author of Funny in Farsi
Dave Eggers, author of The Every
Patricia Engel, author of The Faraway World
Jonathan Escoffery, author of If I Survive You
Sarah Rose Etter, author of Ripe
Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood
Gwen Florio, author of Silent Hearts
Carolyn Forché, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of In the Lateness of the World
Jamie Ford, author of The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
Temim Fruchter, author of City of Laughter
Cristina Garcia, author of Vanishing Maps
Jules Gibbs, author of Snakes and Babies
Eve Gleichman, author of The Very Nice Box
Francisco Goldman, Pulitzer-Prize finalist and author of Monkey Boy
Xochitl Gonzalez, Pulitzer-Prize finalist for Commentary
Reyna Grande, author of The Distance Between Us
Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness
Stephanie Elizondo Griest, author of All the Agents and Saints and Mexican Enough
Myriam Gurba, author of Creep and Mean
Raquel Gutierrez, author of Brown Neon: Essays
Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West
Maria Hinojosa, author of Once I Was You
Jean Chen Ho, author of Fiona and Jane
Brandon Hobson, author of Where the Dead Sit Talking
Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings
Hugh Howey, author of Wool, Sand, Beacon 23
Rose Himber Howse, Stegner Fellow
Hua Hsu, Pulitzer-Prize winner and author of Stay True
Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City
Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk
Mitchell S. Jackson, Pulitzer-Prize winner in Feature Writing for “Twelve Minutes and a Life.”
Meng Jin, author of Self-Portrait with Ghost
Mat Johnson, author of Invisible Things, Loving Day, and Pym
Saeed Jones, author of Alive at the End of the World
Janine Joseph, author of Decade of the Brain
Mitchell Kaplan, bookseller, Books & Books
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, author of Every Drop is a Man’s Nightmare
Lydia Kiesling, author of Mobility
Crystal Hana Kim, author of The Stone Home
Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin
Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun
Lisa Ko, author of Memory Piece and The Leavers
Jamil Jan Kochai, author of The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories
Jean Kwok, author of Searching for Sylvie Lee and Girl in Translation
R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
Deborah Landau, author of Soft Targets
Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
Caroline Leavitt, author of Days of Wonder
Ae Hee Lee, author of Asterism
Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of The Evening Hero
Raven Leilani, author of Luster
Jesse Leon, author of I’m Not Broken and No estoy roto
Grace Shuyi Liew, author of Careen
Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive
Jami Nakamura Lin, author of The Night Parade
Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy
Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs
Jessie Ren Marshall
Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body
Sarah Thankam Matthews, author of All This Could be Different
Askold Melnyczuk, author of What is Told
Faith Merino, author of Cormorant Lake
Courtney Milan, author of The Duke Who Didn’t
Isle McElroy, author of People Collide
Chanel Miller, author of Know My Name
Dantiel W. Moniz, author of Milk Blood Heat
Sierra Crane Murdoch, Pulitzer-Prize finalist and author of Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country
Sequoia Nagamatsu, author of How High We Go in the Dark
Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful
Cleyvis Natera, author of Neruda on the Park
Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Tommy Orange, Pulitzer-Prize finalist and author of There There
Imani Perry, author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Weina Dai Randel, author of Night Angels
Lilliam Rivera, author of Never Look Back
Roger Reeves, author of Best Barbarian
Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Pulitzer-Prize finalist and author of The Man Who Could Move Clouds
Matthew Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder
Erika Sanchez, author of Crying in the Bathroom
Solmaz Sharif, author of Customs
Safiya Sinclair, author of How to Say Babylon
Leora Skolkin-Smith, author of Edges
Maggie Smith, author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
Eshani Surya, author of the forthcoming Ravishing
Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of Heads of the Colored People
Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
E.M. Tran, author of Daughters of the New Year
Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens
Alejandro Varela, author of The Town of Babylon
Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen
Oscar Villalon, editor of ZYZZYVA
Sarah Viren, author of To Name the Bigger Lie
Qian Julie Wang, author of Beautiful Country: A Memoir of An Undocumented Childhood
Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias
Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal
Jemimah Wei, Stegner Fellow
Iris Yamashita, author of City Under One Roof
Lisa Yee, author of Maizy Chen’s Last Chance
Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water, Thrust, Verge
Javier Zamora, author of Solito: A Memoir
Jenny Tinghui Zhang, author of Four Treasures of the Sky
Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks
