Tessa Hulls just won the Pulitzer Prize for a book that she says will be her last.
Hulls, who earlier this month became the second author in history to win a Pulitzer for a work of graphic literature, told Moira Macdonald of the Seattle Times that she has no plans to publish another book.
Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts was published by MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux in March 2024. The graphic memoir tells the story of three generations of women in Hulls’ family as they are affected by political upheaval in China and the trauma that resulted. In addition to the Pulitzer, it won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, given to the best first book in any genre, and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised the memoir as “a work that glimmers with insight, acumen, and an unwillingness to settle for simple answers.”
Hulls said she learned of her Pulitzer win while working a shift as a sous chef for the Alaska state legislature. “I was just in a state of total shock,” she said. “It was just before lunchtime and all the legislators came in, and I just kept making food.”
Feeding Ghosts will be her last book, she said.
“I always said, one and done,” she told Macdonald. “I’ve always been a multidisciplinary artist, (and) I knew that this project was going to require a dedication of both time and self that I would only be able to do once. I am very much at peace with the fact that I’m never going to do something in this exact format again.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
