Purpose Wins Pulitzer

LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Jon Michael Hill,
Glenn Davis and Alana Arenas 
in Purpose.
Credit: Marc J. Franklin

Purpose, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' drama about a prominent African-American family, has won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The runners-up were Oh, Mary! by Cole Escola and The Ally by Itamar Moses. The Pulitzer jury for drama consisted of playwright David Henry Hwang, chairman, Tanya Barfield, Rebecca Gilman, Helen Shaw, and Jose Luis Valenzuela. 

Sara Horden, theater critic for New York Magazine, was a runner-up for the Pulitzer for Criticism. James by Percival Everett, a reinterpretation of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, won for Fiction. Several of Donald Trump's favorite publications including the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal also won (sarcastic).