With a reputation for teaching students to ask the hard questions, it’s not surprising that UC Santa Cruz is home to 11 winners of 13 Pulitzer Prizes. Their writing has given voice to victims and changemakers alike, covered corruption and disease, and told tales of the sea with creativity and purpose.
| 2025 | Jason Roberts (Cowell ’89, literature), for his biography, Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life. The book traces the parallel 18th-century scientific journeys of Carl Linnaeus and Georges-Louis de Buffon, who independently worked to classify and understand the natural world—efforts that still shape our scientific thinking today. |
| 2024 | Lookout Santa Cruz, founded by CEO Ken Doctor (Merrill ’71, sociology), won for breaking news coverage of the devastating floods that hit Santa Cruz County in January 2023. The online publication—launched less than four years before—was recognized for its “detailed and nimble community-focused coverage.” The Lookout team features several Slugs, including Ashley Harmon (Rachel Carson ’16, legal studies); Jamie Garfield (Porter ’11, art); and Lily Belli (Stevenson ’11, history). |
| 2021 | Julia Calderone (‘08, neuroscience and behavior, and ‘14, Science Communication), who was part of a team of New York Times reporters and editors that published a deep package of 15 stories and data-analysis displays about the coronavirus pandemic. |
| 2019 | Jeffrey Conrad (Cowell College ’71, philosophy), who authored The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, a definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance. |
| 2017 | Andrew E. Kramer (Cowell ’94, history), who was part of a team of New York Times reporters and editors that published an investigative series on Russia’s covert projection of power. In 1999, he was part of a team at The Associated Press that was a finalist for the Pulitzer in international reporting. |
| 2016 | Martha Mendoza (Kresge, ’88, independent major, journalism and education), an Associated Press reporter who was part of a team that exposed the use of slave labor in the Thai seafood industry, and William Finnegan (Cowell, ’74, English literature), who authored Barbarian Days, his memoir about surfing. |
| 2008 | Dana Priest (Merrill, ‘81, politics), a Washington Post reporter who exposed the mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. |
| 2006 | Dana Priest (Merrill, ‘81, politics), a Washington Post reporter who exposed the government’s secret “black site” prison. |
| 2000 | Martha Mendoza (Kresge, ’88, independent major, journalism and education), who was part of an Associated Press news team that revealed the slaughter by American soldiers of hundreds of civilians at the No Gun Ri bridge early in the Korean War. |
| 1997 | Annie Wells (Rachel Carson College (College Eight), ’81), who took a dramatic photograph of a local firefighter rescuing a teenager from raging floodwaters for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. |
| 1996 | Laurie Garrett (Merrill ’75, biology), who wrote a series of articles about the 1995 Ebola epidemic in Zaire for Newsday. |
| 1993 | Hector Tobar (Oakes, ‘88, Latin American studies and sociology), a reporter who covered the Los Angeles riots for the Los Angeles Times. |