Notes from SAJA Board Member JOHN LAXMI. If you'd like to be on his excellent mailing list tracking major trends and issues in journalism and media coverage of South Asia and the diaspora: johnlaxmius@gmail.com 

Three South Asians have won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize and two were among finalists. A book on the killing of Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh was a finalist in the book category.

Public Service

ProPublica, for urgent reporting by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, Cassandra Jaramillo and Stacy Kranitz

About pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague “life of the mother” exceptions in states with strict abortion laws.

Kavitha Surana joined ProPublica as a national reporter covering access to reproductive health care in 2022. Before that, she reported on housing, law enforcement and health care at the Tampa Bay Times and BuzzFeed News. She was previously a fellow at ProPublica covering immigration. She got her start interning at The Associated Press in Rome and CNN, and as a fellow at Foreign Policy magazine.

Explanatory Reporting

Azam Ahmed, Matthieu Aikins, contributing writer, and Christina Goldbaum of The New York Times

For an authoritative examination of how the United States sowed the seeds of its own failure in Afghanistan, primarily by supporting murderous militia that drove civilians to the Taliban.

Azam Ahmed is an investigative reporter for The New York Times, focusing on long-form narrative projects.

In 2019, when he was the bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, Mr. Ahmed reported a series on the homicide crisis in Latin America, the deadliest region in the world, outlining the root causes of the violence. Each piece delved into a specific issue in a specific country, using intimate portraits of those living on the front lines of the crisis.

Finalists: Alexia Campbell, April Simpson and Pratheek Rebala of the Center for Public Integrity

For using innovative technology, archival research and personal storytelling to reveal how land titles granted to formerly enslaved Black men and women in the wake of the Civil War were unjustly revoked.

Pratheek Rebala was an investigative journalist and news developer at the Center for Public Integrity. He is now a computational journalist with ProPublica. His work at CPI received a Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting as well as other honors from the Society of Professional Journalists, Editors & Publishers, Society of Environmental Journalists and more. Prior to joining CPI, Rebala worked on the data team at Time Magazine. He holds a bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from George Washington University.

Editorial Writing

Raj Mankad, Sharon Steinmann, Lisa Falkenberg and Leah Binkovitz of the Houston Chronicle

For a powerful series on dangerous train crossings that kept a rigorous focus on the people and communities at risk as the newspaper demanded urgent action.

Raj Mankad is the deputy opinion editor at the Houston Chronicle. He has a PhD from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, and has edited and written for publications that specialize in economics, philosophy, literature, architecture, science and health. He previously served as the Chronicle’s op-ed editor and won the 2021 Texas APME first place in general column writing.

Feature Writing

Finalist: Anand Gopal, contributing writer, The New Yorker

For a deeply reported narrative of a woman’s life before and after she is imprisoned at an isolated detention camp in eastern Syria, illustrating how love and family intersect with larger geopolitical concerns.

Anand Gopal is a contributing writer at The New Yorker. He writes about conflict, democracy, and inequality, and his book “No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes” was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He has won a National Magazine Award, a George Polk Award, and multiple Overseas Press Club awards for his reporting on Iraq and Syria. He has a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

General Nonfiction

Finalist: "I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist’s Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India," by Rollo Romig (Penguin Books)

A captivating account of a crusading South Indian’s [journalist Gauri Lankesh] murder, a mystery rich in local culture and politics that also connects to such global themes as authoritarianism, fundamentalism and other threats to free expression.

Born and raised in Detroit, Rollo Romig is a journalist, essayist, and critic. He has been reporting on South India since 2013, most often for The New York Times Magazine.

For the full list and details of winners and awards, see: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2025