Emily Nussbaum '88 Awarded Pulitzer Prize

Emily Nussbaum ’88, television critic for The New Yorker, has been awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. The prize is awarded annually “for distinguished criticism, using any available journalistic tool,” and comes with a prize of $10,000.

Nussbaum has written about television shows “The Good Wife,” “Scandal,” and “Girls,” the latter of which was created by and stars fellow Oberlin College alumna Lena Dunham ’08. Her standout essays on Joan Rivers, P. Jay Sidney, advertising, and “Mad Men” were among the pieces submitted to the Pulitzer committee. According to the Pulitzer citation, the committee selected Nussbaum for this honor “for television reviews written with an affection that never blunts the shrewdness of her analysis or the easy authority of her writing.”

Nussbaum worked as an editor and writer for New York magazine for seven years prior to joining The New Yorker staff. She is the recipient of the 2014 National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary for her essays “Shark Week,” "Difficult Women,” and “Private Practice.”

Nussbaum is the second Oberlin alumni to be selected for a Pulitzer Prize in recent years. In 2014, Vijay Seshadri ’74 won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for 3 Sections.

See The New Yorker archives to read more of Nussbaum’s work and follow her on Twitter @emilynussbaum.