Ayad Akhtar's DISGRACED Wins 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

The 97th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music, awarded on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board, were announced earlier today by Columbia University. For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to "Disgraced," by Ayad Akhtar, a moving play that depicts a successful corporate lawyer painfully forced to consider why he has for so long camouflaged his Pakistani Muslim heritage. Also nominated as finalists in this category were: "Rapture, Blister, Burn," by Gina Gionfriddo, a searing comedy that examines the psyches of two women in midlife as they ruefully question the differing choices they have made, and "4000 Miles," by Amy Herzog, a drama that shows acute understanding of human idiosyncrasy as a spiky 91-year-old locks horns with her rudderless 21-year-old grandson who shows up at her Greenwich Village apartment after a disastrous cross-country bike trip.

The Pulitzer Prize Board made its recommendations for the 2013 prizes when it met at Columbia on April 11 and 12 and passed them to President Lee C. Bollinger. It announced that the awards would be presented at a luncheon on May 30 at Columbia University.

Junot Díaz, Paul Gigot and EuGene Robinson were re-elected to membership on the board.

The members of the Pulitzer Prize Board are: President Bollinger; Danielle Allen, UPS Foundation professor, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.; Randell Beck, president and publisher, Argus Leader Media; Robert Blau, managing editor for projects and investigations, Bloomberg News; Steve Coll, author and staff writer, The New Yorker; Joyce Dehli, vice president for news, Lee Enterprises; Junot Díaz, Rudge and Nancy Allen professor of writing, MIT; Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief, ProPublica; Thomas L. Friedman, columnist, The New York Times; Paul A. Gigot, editorial page editor and vice president, The Wall Street Journal; Aminda Marqués Gonzalez, vice president and executive editor, The Miami Herald; Steven Hahn, Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols professor of history, University of Pennsylvania; Quiara Alegría Hudes, playwright; Nicholas Lemann, dean, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University; Gregory L. Moore, editor, The Denver Post; EuGene Robinson, columnist and associate editor, The Washington Post; Paul Tash, chairman and CEO, Tampa Bay Times; Keven Ann Willey, vice president/editorial page editor, The Dallas Morning News; and Sig Gissler, administrator of the Prizes.

In any category in which board members have an interest due to the action of the various nominating juries, those members do not participate in the discussion and voting and leave the room until a decision is reached in the affected category. Similarly, members of nominating juries do not participate in the discussion of or voting on entries in which they have an interest.