Airmont native wins Pulitzer for MLK bio
Jonathan Eig, the journalist and biographer who grew up in Airmont and graduated from Spring Valley High School, can now add “Pulitzer Prize winner” to his own biography.
“King: A Life,” Eig’s ground-breaking examination of Martin Luther King Jr., last week was named the winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, a category that honors “a distinguished and appropriately documented biography by an American author.”
The Pulitzer citation called Eig’s massive work “a revelatory portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. that draws on new sources to enrich our understanding of each stage of the civil rights leader’s life, exploring his strengths and weaknesses, including the self-questioning and depression that accompanied his determination.”
Reached by phone on Wednesday, the newly minted Pulitzer winner said he’s still pinching himself, wondering if it’s real.
“I’ve wanted to be a journalist since I was 16 or so, when I started working at the Rockland Journal News,” Eig said. “You hear about the Pulitzer and it’s kind of like a dream, but it seems like a faroff and almost impossible one. So this is unbelievable. It’s incredible to think that it actually happened.”
The biographer gave credit to his subject.
“Martin Luther King played a big part in this,” he said. “His story is so inspiring to people. And a big part of my success comes from telling his story.”
Eig on Wednesday reflected on the grind of spending six years researching and writing the book, and what drove him, and petrified him. He wasn’t thinking about awards, he said.
“I thought this is the hardest and maybe the most important book I would ever write. I guess when the stakes are high then the reward is potentially higher, but mostly I was just worried about the pressure and the possibility of failing,” he said. “I was more motivated by the fear of disappointing the people who care about Martin Luther King than I was about winning awards.” Last August, Eig said when he began the journey to write “King: A Life,” he knew he’d be synthesizing what others had written, but he wanted his work to stand apart, for people to see Martin Luther King Jr., warts and all.
He details King’s extramarital affairs, his hospitalizations for exhaustion, in a profile that took the civil rights leader off a pedestal.
“My No. 1 goal was to create a more human portrait and to make him more relatable to people,” Eig said last summer. “And I worried that, as a result of that, some people might protest: ‘He’s a saint. He’s a hero. Don’t mess with him.’ But that has not been the case. And I feel really gratified about that.”
Within hours of learning of the news, Eig took to X, the social media platform once called Twitter, and posted a playful photo of him and his daughter holding ice cream cones. “How do you celebrate a #Pulitzer?” he wrote. “Pick up the kid from school and get DQ! What a feeling! Thanks to everyone who trusted me and helped me tell this story. #KingALife @fsgbooks.”