We tried hard, but came up short — for the 32nd year in a row, the Memphis Flyer was shut out of the Pulitzer Prizes. But Memphian Katori Hall had a much better day. She was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play The Hot Wing King.
The Pulitzer committee called the play, which is set in Memphis, “A funny, deeply felt consideration of Black masculinity and how it is perceived, filtered through the experiences of a loving gay couple and their extended family as they prepare for a culinary competition.”
Hall was previously nominated for a pair of Tony Awards for Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and won a Laurence Oliver Award for The Mountaintop, her dramatization of the final night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. Her short film “Arkabutla” won the Audience Award at Indie Memphis 2018. Hall’s play Pussy Valley was adapted into the Starz TV series P-Valley, which was just renewed for its second season. Season 1 currently sits at an exceedingly rare 100 percent fresh rating on the film and TV critic roundup site Rotten Tomatoes.
The Pulitzer Prizes were established by pioneering newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer in 1917 to award excellence in journalism and writing. Among the winners in the Memphis Flyer’s categories this year were The New York Times for its team coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the staff of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune for their coverage of the George Floyd murder and the protests that followed. A special citation was given to Darnella Frazier, the 17-year-old whose video of the death of Floyd sparked the largest protest movement in American history.
The staff of the Flyer sends our congratulations to Katori Hall. We’ll get ’em next year. Meanwhile, here’s the trailer to the Signature Theater’s February 2020 production of The Hot Wing King.
