Canadian photographer wins Pulitzer

Canadian wins Pulitzer
Montreal-born Barbara Davidson, a photographer working for the Los Angeles Times, is among the winners of Pulitzer Prizes announced Monday.
She won the feature photography award for a series of images about victims of street violence in Los Angeles. Davidson spent nearly two years gaining the trust of insular communities such as South Los Angeles, Compton and Watts before taking striking images of those who were shot, many of them innocent victims.

Los Angeles Times photographer Barbara Davidson won the Pulitzer for a series of images including one of Erica Miranda, 10, who was shot three times while playing basketball outside her home in Compton, Calif. (Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times/Associated Press)

This is Davidson's second Pulitzer — she won for her coverage of Hurricane Katrina when she worked for the Dallas News.
There are seven Pulitzer Prizes for drama, music and letters and 14 for journalism, although the award for breaking news was not given this year. The award is administered by Columbia University and comes with $10,000 US.

In fiction and drama, Chicago writers packed a punch, with Jennifer Egan taking a Pulitzer for her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad and Bruce Norris winning for Clybourne Park.
Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad won the Pulitzer for fiction.

Egan's novel is "an inventive investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age, displaying a big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed," the Pulitzer jury said in its citation. A Visit from the Goon Squad also experiments with format, with one long section structured like a PowerPoint presentation.
Clybourne Park examines race relations and the effects of modern gentrification in a fictitious Chicago neighbourhood. The play premiered at Playwrights Horizons in New York in February 2010, before going on to London.

Other winners for writing and music:

History: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner.

Biography: Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow.

Poetry: The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan.

Non-fiction: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

Music: Madame White Snake by Zhou Long.

In journalism, the New York Times took two Pulitzers — for international reporting and for commentary.Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry won the international reporting award for their examination of the faltering justice system in Russia, while David Leonhardt won the prize for his economic commentary on subjects ranging from the U.S. federal budget deficit to health-care reform.

The investigative reporting award went to Paige St. John of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Florida for an investigation of the state's murky property-insurance system that ended up stirring regulatory action.