Logan Nonfiction Fellow David Zucchino Wins Pulitzer Prize
“Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy” Wins in General Nonfiction Category
Rensselaerville, N.Y. — David Zucchino, a 2016 Logan Nonfiction fellow, has won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, Columbia University announced June 11.
Zucchino was chosen for the Pulitzer for his book “Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy,” which he worked on as a Logan Nonfiction fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good in Rensselaerville, New York.
The book is an account of the 1898 Wilmington riot and coup, which violently deposed the North Carolina city’s multi-racial elected government, an extraordinary event unknown to most Americans. In “Wilmington’s Lie,” Zucchino uses contemporary newspaper accounts, diaries, letters and official communications to create a gripping and compelling narrative that weaves together individual stories of hate and fear and brutality. This is a dramatic and definitive account of a remarkable but forgotten chapter of American history.
Since its inception in 2015 the Logan Nonfiction Program has hosted over 200 journalists and documentarians from 40 countries and include journalists and filmmakers such as Daniel Ellsberg, Rania Abouzeid, Shane Bauer, Jessica Bruder, Jacqueline Olive and Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson. Their work has been honored bv the Sundance Institute, the New York Times and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, among others.
Logan Fellows stay on the Carey campus for five to ten weeks. With the onset of COVID-19, however, the Program has been conducted virtually.
This is Zucchino’s second Pulitzer. As a contributing writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his reporting from apartheid South Africa. He is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for coverage of Lebanon, Africa, inner-city Philadelphia and Iraq. He has reported from more than three dozen countries, most recently from Iraq. Zucchino is the author of the books “Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad” (2004) and “Myth of the Welfare Queen” (1997).
The Logan Nonfiction Program was created with the intention of helping to fill the gap in the media-business landscape between the resources a news outlet or book publisher can devote to long-form narratives and the support a journalist or author needs. Giving individual journalists and filmmakers the time, space and community they need to finish critical works of nonfiction is not only essential to the continued production of these deep investigations, but it is also essential to the individuals, communities and democracy at large these investigations serve.
“The United States and the world in general sorely needs the kind of deeply reported work exemplified by David’s magnificent book. We are proud to have contributed to his project,” said Josh Friedman, chair of the Logan Nonfiction Program Advisory Board.
“The work being produced by our nonfiction fellows is crucial to the future of democracy,” said Jonathan Logan, President and CEO of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, based in Berkeley, CA. “We are very pleased to have the Logan Nonfiction Program as one of our flagship programs.”
The Logan Nonfiction Program is sponsored by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, as well as other foundations and organizations.
The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation supports organizations that advance social justice by empowering world-changing work in investigative journalism, arts and culture, and documentary film.
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Zan Strumfeld
Logan Nonfiction Program
zan@logannonfiction.org