May 6, 2025 - Culture

Seattle author Tessa Hulls wins Pulitzer for her memoir

Melissa Santos

Author Tessa Hulls is shown smiling in front of a purple background, wearing a blue blouse and dangling earrings. — Author Tessa Hulls is now a Pulitzer winner. Photo: Courtesy of Gritchelle Fallesgon

Seattle author Tessa Hulls won a Pulitzer Prize this week for her first book, "Feeding Ghosts."

What they're saying: Hull's graphic memoir is "an affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women — the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories," the Pulitzer committee wrote.

What's inside: The book details how Hulls' grandmother fled persecution by the Communist government, smuggling herself and Hull's mother to Hong Kong in the false bottom of a fishing boat.

"Feeding Ghosts" explores immigration, loss of culture, mental illness and mixed race identity, but "is ultimately about the ways in which mothers and daughters both damage and save each other," Hulls writes on her website.

What's next: Hull has a busy book tour calendar, with stops scheduled over the next two months in Alaska and Canada, and more planned for later this year in Colorado, California and Oregon.

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Seattle author Tessa Hulls wins Pulitzer for her memoir

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