The 2015 Pulitzer Prizes were announced in April, and among them were works by two MacDowell Fellows. Congratulations are due to Gregory Pardlo for winning the Pulitzer in Poetry for his collection Digest, and to Julia Wolfe for winning the Pulitzer Prize in Music for her oratorio Anthracite Fields.
Digest is Pardlo’s second volume of poetry. According to The New York Times, it was rejected by all major publishers when it made the rounds in 2010. When it was finally published last fall, by the small literary press Four Way Books, it sold modestly. The judges cited Pardlo's “clear-voiced poems that bring readers the news from 21st Century America, rich with thought, ideas and histories public and private.” Pardlo was in residence two times, last in winter of 2009.
The Pulitzer jury described Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields as “a powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th century." The hour-long work was commissioned by the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, which gave the world premiere, along with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, April 26, 2014 in Philadelphia. Wolfe, who was in residence during the winter of 1989, is a co-founder of Bang on a Can and a former finalist for the prize. She is also the second composer from the group to win a Pulitzer. David Lang, another co-founder who has been to MacDowell five times, won in 2008 for The Little Match Girl Passion, also a choral work.
