I just wanted to share a few photographs from the 2013 Pulitzer Prize Award Luncheon at Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library.  The ceremony itself was very understated and moving.  The winners do not make acceptance speeches.  It’s all about the work itself, which seems most fitting.    Still, the weight of the moment and the significance of the award wasn’t lost on anyone.  Whatever disbelief I carried around with me over the last month disappeared once I was inside the rotunda, listening to the profound luncheon remarks of Paul Tash, chairman of the Pulitzer Board. 

I ran into my friend Adam Johnson, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his magnificent novel, The Orphan Master’s Son.  (Adam took the picture above of me with my literary agent, Farley Chase.)  And I met some new friends, like Tom Reiss, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Biography for The Black Count, and Frederik Logevall, recipient of the Pulitzer in History for Embers of War.

In keeping with the theme of writers and work, I thought I’d include a photo of the manuscript pages for Devil in the Grove, taken in October, 2011.  With about a week to proofread and make small changes to the book, I was still writing, adding, cutting, and rearranging large chunks of text, right up until the very end.  Fortunately, I had a very supportive editor in Gail Winston, who indulged my last minute tinkering of the manuscript without complaint.  Those are the little things that can sometimes make a world of difference.