Adapted from a story by Jamie Saxon, Office of Communications, on the University homepage
Princeton professor Yiyun Li (Lewis Center for the Arts) has won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for memoir for her 2025 book, “Things in Nature Merely Grow.”
Li is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities and a professor of creative writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts
The Pulitzer Prize for memoir recognizes “a distinguished and factual memoir or autobiography by an American author.” The Pulitzer citation called “Things in Nature Merely Grow” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2025) “a writer’s deeply moving and revelatory account of losing her younger son to suicide a little more than six years after her older son died in the same manner, an austere and defiant memoir of acceptance that focuses on facts, language and the persistence of life.”
“The book was written during a difficult time in my life about a tremendous loss,” Li said, in a story on the University homepage, calling the Pulitzer a “bittersweet honor.”
“Things in Nature Merely Grow” also won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. It was a finalist for the National Book Award for nonfiction and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. It was included in The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2025, The New Yorker Best Books of 2025, and The Washington Post 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction from 2025, among many others.
This year’s Pulitzer winners also include Princeton alumna Natalie Obiko Pearson ’99, at Bloomberg, for illustrated reporting and commentary.
Journalism professors Vinson Cunningham and Kevin Sack, who are both visiting lecturers in the Humanities Council, were named finalists for the 2026 Pulitzer Prizes. Cunningham was named a finalist for criticism; Sack was named a finalist for general nonfiction. Princeton faculty member Patricia Smith (Lewis Center for the Arts) was named a finalist for poetry.
