Mitchell S. Jackson’s Impactful Account of Racial Atrocity Earns the 2021 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Feature Writing
Former NHWP 603 Conference Keynote Speaker Wins Pulitzer
Mitchell S. Jackson gained widespread critical praise for his debut novel The Residue Years published in 2013. At the time, one reviewer said the book was “honest in its portrayal, with cadences that dazzle, The Residue Years signals the arrival of a writer set to awe.” That review proved to be true. The novel garnered multiple honors and Jackson, as an author, has since won fellowships, grants, and awards from Creative Capital, the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, the Lannan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, PEN America, TED, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Center for Fiction. He can now add winning a Pulitzer Prize to his resumé.
Jackson’s well-researched, vivid account of the racially charged killing of Ahmaud Arbery earned the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing. The piece, Twelve Minutes and a Life is told through interviews with those close to Arbery and the author’s own personal experiences. It is the story of “Maud” Arbery, a young black man whose love of jogging led to his untimely and violent death. On February 23, 2020, Arbery’s preferred way of working out was seen as suspicious and signaled some sort of wrong-doing to residents in a “white” neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia. Gregory and Travis McMichael, a father and son, who live there, pursued and overtook Arbery in a pickup truck after Arbery “was seen running.” They were joined by a third man who filmed the incident. In the end, Arbery was shot and killed by multiple gunshots. Clips of the incident were broadcast on national TV news repeatedly; hashed out on talk radio, and made headlines from coast to coast. Yet, it is Jackson’s feature that paints a complete picture and humanizes Arbery.
Twelve Minutes and a Life presents stories and recollections about Arbery that demonstrate his athleticism, his dreams, his love of family, and why he came to like running. Maud Arbery becomes a person rather than just the subject of a news story. Jackson does a masterful job of weaving the facts of the incident, the information he gleaned through talking with those who knew Arbery best, and his own editorial content. He expertly parses the story out in snippets winding back and forth in time.
The writing in this piece is remarkable in style, tone, and craft. It is easy to understand how Jackson received his well-earned prize. It is definitely worth a read. Read it here, in its entirety.
Jackson has delivered lectures and keynote addresses all over the world, including the NHWP’s 2016 603 Conference, the annual TED Conference, the Ubud (Bali) Writers, and Readers Festival, and the Sydney Writers’ Festival, as well as at esteemed institutions, among them Yale University, Brown University, Cornell University, and Columbia University.
A formerly incarcerated person, Jackson is also a social justice advocate who engages in outreach in prisons and youth facilities in the United States and abroad.
