Pulitzer
Prize awarded to Barnard alumna Jhumpa Lahiri ’89;
Katherine Boo ’88 cited in public service award
to The Washington Post
April
11, 2000, NEW YORK, N.Y. – Barnard alumna Jhumpa
Lahiri ’89 – who speaks on campus Wednesday, April
12 – has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction,
while a second Barnard alumna, Katherine Boo ’88,
was cited for her work in a series in The Washington
Post.
Lahiri
won the Prize for fiction for her book Interpreter
of Maladies, a book of short stories that has won
wide acclaim. (More
on Lahiri)
Boo’s
work was specifically recognized in the Gold Medal
for public service awarded The Washington Post
for a series on abuse in District of Columbia group
homes – a series for which she served as a writer.
(More
on Boo)
Both
were English majors.
"This
is a pretty good season for the English department,"
said Chris Baswell, chair of the department and
professor of English.
Commenting
on Interpreter of Maladies, Baswell said, "It's
a remarkable first
book, with an admirably assured sense of how to
deploy a narrative without reaching for tricky structure.
And Jhumpa has a wonderful sense of prose rhythm,
and how that rhythm can display character and tone
as effectively as word choice. She works all the
resources of language. I can't wait for the next
book."
Five
other Barnard alumnae have won or shared the Pulitzer
Prize.
They
include: Natalie Angier ’78, an author and science
writer for The New York Times, who won the
award for beat reporting in 1991; Anna Quindlen
’74, an author and columnist for Newsweek,
who won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1992;
Rose Marie Arce ’86 and Suzanne Bilello '77, who
were both members of a Newsday team in 1992 that
shared the Pulitzer for spot news reporting; and
Eileen McNamara ’74, who won the Pulitzer Prize
in 1997 for commentary in The Boston Globe.
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