In terms of prestige, William Shakespeare and John James Audubon have just been taken down a notch.
Alumna Annalyn Swan and her husband, art critic Mark Stevens, received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for biography for their profile of abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning, which beat out biographies on Shakespeare (“Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare” by Stephen Greenblatt) and Audubon (“Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of the Birds of America” by William Souder).
Swan is the second Loyola alumni to receive the Pulitzer, the most prestigious award in journalism and the first female to do so. In addition to the prestige, the award carries with it a $10,000 cash prize.
“de Kooning: An American Master” has received near-unanimous praise from the press. In addition to the Pulitzer, it has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and is nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, which will be announced later in the month.
Swan, a Biloxi native attended Loyola during the 1969-70 school year, during which time she served as news editor for The Maroon. Oddly enough, Swan was a colleague of Bob Marshall, Loyola’s other Pulitzer Prize winner, then The Maroon’s sports editor. Marshall is currently the outdoors editor for The Times-Picayune.
Former Maroon colleague and Times-Picayune staff writer Bruce Nolan remembers Swan well.
“She was very bright and engaging,” Nolan said. “We had a lot of fun in the office.”
In 1970, Swan transferred from Loyola to Princeton where she graduated three years later.
Professionally, Swan has written for “TIME” and served as a music critic and senior arts editor at “Newsweek.” According to her bio, she has also written for “The New Republic,” “The Atlantic Monthly” and “The New Yorker.”
“de Kooning: An American Master” follows de Kooning from his work as an abstract expressionist through his battles with alcoholism and Alzheimer’s. In researching it, Swan and Stevens traveled extensively to collect first-person accounts from people who knew de Kooning. According to an article in the Biloxi Sun Herald, the 732-page biography took nearly 10 years to write.
Swan is in the United Kingdom this week and unavailable for comment. However, she did comment to the Associated Press that she was thrilled about the award.
“[My] editor just called,” Swan told the AP. “We’re both sort of coming back to Earth.”
Chuck Alexander can be reached at [email protected].
