James McWilliams, a professor of practice in the Department of History of Texas State University, has been named a 2026 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his biography The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford.
Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution, by Amanda Vaill, won the Pulitzer in the biography category. The Pulitzer Prize Board announces a shortlist of finalists along with the winning work.
The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford, published by the University of Arkansas Press, was described by the Pulitzer Prize Board as “A finely-researched work that illuminates the story of a little-known yet consequential literary figure, whose life helps us better understand the cultural history of the American South.”
To write the book, McWilliams conducted more than 200 interviews and researched it for more than seven years.
“I’m honored with this award on many levels,” McWilliams said. “It’s obviously gratifying to work hard on a book and have it recognized. But in a deeper way, I am even more pleased that the subject of my biography—a relatively obscure poet from the American South who was dead before he was 30—will gain greater (and well deserved) exposure and move more people as a result of this award.
“And in an even deeper way, I am thrilled to have received this honor with a book published by a small university press (the University of Arkansas Press),” he said, “making it a reminder of something my Texas State students teach me every day: those on the peripheries of conventional status and power can still find dignity in the simple honesty and integrity of their work.”
McWilliams is the author of Eating Promiscuously: Essays on the Future of Food (Counterpoint, 2017); The Modern Savage: Our Unthinking Decision to Eat Animals (Thomas Dunne Books, 2015); America’s Native Nut: A Brief History of the Pecan Tree (University of Texas Press, 2013); The Politics of the Pasture: How Two Oxen Inspired a National Debate about Eating Animals (Lantern Books, 2013); Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly (Little, Brown, 2009); American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT (Columbia University Press, 2008); Building the Bay Colony: Local Economy and Culture in Early Massachusetts (University of Virginia Press, 2007); and A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America (Columbia University Press, 2005).
For more information, visit the Pulitzer Prize website.