Annie Baker's drama play The Flick and Donna Tartt's novel The Goldfinch won Pulitzer Prizes on Monday.
Baker's play was somewhat of a surprise selection due to its divisive off-Broadway run in 2013, reports the Los Angeles Times. The play was known to cause some to simply walkout during its run.
The drama, which won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, follows employees passing the time while they work at a small single-screen movie theater.
Other finalists for the Pulitzer were Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori's musical Fun Home and Madeleine George's The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence.
Tartt's Goldfinch was a highly celebrated book and it took home the Pulitzer for fiction, according to The Associated Press. The book is set in modern Manhattan and follows a young orphan. The novel also has been nominated for an Andrew Carnegie Medal and National Book Critics Circle prize.
Taking home his second Prize, Alan Taylor won for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia. The general nonfiction Pulitzer went to Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin. The biography Prize went to Megan Marshall for Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and the poetry Prize went to Vijay Seshadri's 3 Sections. John Luther Adams won the music Pulitzer for Becoming Ocean. ]
Meanwhile, The Guardian and The Washington Post took home a shared Pulitzer for their coverage of the NSA's secret surveillance program. The Post's Eli Saslow won for his stories on the people living on food stamps, The Boston Globe won for their coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings and The New York Times took two Prizes for photography.