Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a series of annual prizes awarded by Columbia University, in the name of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, for outstanding public service and achievement in several categories of American journalism, as well as letters, drama and music.
Debbie Cenziper (2007 for Local Reporting)
Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications
Investigative reporter Debbie Cenziper is associate professor and director of investigative journalism at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing, Communications. For more than 20 years, Cenziper’s investigative stories have exposed wrongdoing, prompted Congressional hearings and led to changes in federal and local laws. She received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for a year-long investigation about affordable housing corruption, which led to the convictions of several developers and to a federal takeover of the housing agency.
Natasha Trethewey (2007 for Poetry)
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
A native of Mississippi, Trethewey was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2007 for “Native Guard: Poems” and served two terms as U.S. Poet Laureate. She joined Northwestern in 2017 as a Board of Trustees Professor of English and previously served two terms as U.S. Poet Laureate. Trethewey’s poetry draws on extensive research and on memories of her own experience as the daughter of an African-American mother and white father whose marriage union was illegal in Mississippi at that time.
Garry Wills (1993 for General Nonfiction)
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Garry Wills is a prolific author, journalist and historian specializing in American history, politics and religion, especially the history of the Roman Catholic Church. After earning a B.A. in philosophy at Saint Louis University, an M.A. at Xavier University and a Ph.D. in classics at Yale University, he taught history from 1962 to 1980 at Johns Hopkins University and from 1980 to 2005 at Northwestern University, where he is now professor emeritus. His nearly 40 books include “Why I Am a Catholic,” “Papal Sin,” “Reagan’s America” and two National Book Critics Circle Award winners: “Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence” and the 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America.” His numerous other honors include the National Medal for the Humanities, the Order of Lincoln and the 2014 “Festschrift Nation and World, Church and God: The Legacy of Garry Wills.”
