Arts & Culture
UCSC alumnus wins Pulitzer
Jason Roberts was awarded the 2025 prize for his biography “Every Living Thing”
Alumnus Jason Roberts (Cowell ’89, literature) was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize on May 5, for his biography, Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life. The prestigious prize honors American achievements in journalism, books, drama, and music.
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.
“I’ve lately been drawn to write what I call human scale history, nonfiction narratives that feature forgotten or neglected figures from the past—people whose stories deserve to be reclaimed as part of our cultural heritage,” Roberts shares on his website. “Given the under-documented nature of such subjects, the work necessarily goes slowly. But it’s more than worthwhile.”
The Pulitzer Prize committee called Roberts’s book “a beautifully written double biography.”
Roberts is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. His previous book, A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler, was a national bestseller and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Roberts is also a contributor to McSweeney’s, The Believer, and other publications.
“We are thrilled to congratulate Jason Roberts on this extraordinary achievement. His Pulitzer Prize reflects the deep engagement with literature, history, and critical thinking that we cultivate in the Humanities,” says Jasmine Alinder, Dean of the Humanities Division. “Jason’s ability to illuminate forgotten stories and connect them to our contemporary world exemplifies the intellectual curiosity and rigorous scholarship we encourage in all our students. This recognition affirms the lasting impact of a humanities education at UC Santa Cruz.”
With this latest honor, UC Santa Cruz now counts 11 alumni who have won a total of 13 Pulitzer Prizes, solidifying the university’s reputation as a nurturing ground for exceptional writers and journalists.