Three Pinays are finalists at 2024 Pulitzer Prize
Three Filipina creatives—visual artist Ren Galeno, journalist Nicole Dungca, and photographer Hannah Reyes—are among the finalists for the prestigious 2024 Pulitzer Prize.
Galeno and Dungca, along with journalist Claire Healy, were nominated for their collaborative work Searching For Maura in the Illustrated Reporting and Commentary category. The project uses comics to shed light on a historical injustice that happened in 1904 when some of the Filipinos at the World's Fair in St. Louis died.
The committee—comprised of Shazna Nessa, Kainaz Amaria, Kevin Siers, Michael Sloan, and Aki Soga—commended their work for its "masterful and sensitive use of the comic form."
Galeno is a visual artist from Davao City and graduated from the University of the Philippines Diliman with a bachelor’s degree in painting and currently works in comics and illustration.
Dungca, meanwhile, reports for the investigative unit of The Washington Post, where the article appeared. She was also a co-host of the award-winning Broken Doors investigative podcast. Apart from that, Dungca also wrote for the Boston Globe's Spotlight Team, Oregonian, the Times-Picayune, and the Providence Journal. Currently, she is the president of the Asian American Journalists Association.
The winner of the Illustrated Reporting and Commentary category was Medar de la Cruz, a contributor at The New Yorker. His piece focused on a Rikers Island jail library worker, using "bold black-and-white images" to depict the humanizing power of books for both prisoners and staff.
The other finalists include Angie Wang of The New Yorker and Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Meanwhile, Reyes was nominated as a finalist in Feature Photography in 2024. She was lauded for her "creative series of photographs" that capture the "youthquake" in Africa, where "by 2050, the continent will account for one-quarter of the world’s population and one-third of its young people."
Reyes, co-founder of Emerging Islands and a multi-awarded photographer, is a National Geographic explorer and a 2022-2023 fellow at Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris.
She was recently awarded the Tim Hetherington Visionary Award and the ICP Infinity Award for Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism, and was named a cultural leader by the World Economic Forum ASEAN, among others.
The award went to the photography staff of the Associated Press.
The Pulitzer Prize is a set of annual prizes awarded by Columbia University, New York City. These awards recognize outstanding achievements in American journalism, literature, and music, including contributions to public service.