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Bertelsmann sweeps Pulitzers

They’re likely dancing in the halls of Random House U.S. today. Yesterday, the Pulitzer Prizes for literature were announced, and Random and its affiliate, Doubleday, swept the fiction, non-fiction, and biography categories.

Elizabeth Strout’s short fiction collection Olive Kitteridge won in the fiction category, beating out heavyweight Louise Erdrich, who was nominated for her novel The Plague of Doves, and Christine Schutt, nominated for her novel All Souls. In their citation, the jury said that Strout’s collection “packs a cumulative emotional wallop, bound together by polished prose and by Olive, the title character, [who is] blunt, flawed, and fascinating.”

Douglas A. Blackmon won in the general non-fiction category for his book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, “a precise and eloquent work that examines a deliberate system of racial suppression and that rescues a multitude of atrocities from virtual obscurity,” according to the jury citation.

In the biography category, Jon Meacham won for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, which the jurors call “an unflinching portrait of a not always admirable democrat but a pivotal president, written with an agile prose that brings the Jackson saga to life.”

A complete list of winners and jury members for each category is online, here.