The following are the Pulitzer Prizes for 1994.

Journalism awards

• Public Service:
  • Akron Beacon Journal, for its broad examination of local racial attitudes and its subsequent effort to promote improved communication in the community.
• Spot News Reporting:
  • Staff of The New York Times, for its comprehensive coverage of the bombing of Manhattan's World Trade Center.
• Investigative Reporting:
  • Staff of The Providence Journal-Bulletin, for thorough reporting that disclosed pervasive corruption within the Rhode Island court system.
• Explanatory Journalism:
  • Ronald Kotulak of the Chicago Tribune, for his lucid coverage of current developments in neurological science.
• Beat Reporting:
  • Eric Freedman and Jim Mitzelfeld of The Detroit News, for dogged reporting that disclosed flagrant spending abuses at Michigan's House Fiscal Agency.
• National Reporting:
  • Eileen Welsome of The Albuquerque Tribune, for stories that related the experiences of Americans who had been used unknowingly in government radiation experiments nearly 50 years ago.
• International Reporting:
  • Dallas Morning News Team of The Dallas Morning News, for its series examining the epidemic of violence against women in many nations.
• Feature Writing:
  • Isabel Wilkerson of The New York Times, for her profile of a fourth-grader from Chicago's South Side and for two stories reporting on the Midwestern flood of 1993.
• Commentary:
  • William Raspberry of The Washington Post, for his compelling commentaries on a variety of social and political topics.
• Criticism:
  • Lloyd Schwartz of the Boston Phoenix, a weekly, for his skillful and resonant classical music criticism.
• Editorial Writing:
  • R. Bruce Dold of the Chicago Tribune, for his series of editorials deploring the murder of a 3-year-old boy by his abusive mother and decrying the Illinois child welfare system.
• Editorial Cartooning:
  • Michael P. Ramirez of The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee, for his trenchant cartoons on contemporary issues.
• Spot News Photography:
  • Paul Watson of the Toronto Star, for his photograph, published in many American newspapers, of a U.S. soldier's body being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by a mob of jeering Somalis.
• Feature Photography:
  • Kevin Carter, a freelance photographer, for a picture first published in The New York Times of a starving Sudanese girl who collapsed on her way to a feeding center while a vulture waited nearby.

Letters awards

• Fiction:
  • The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (Charles Scribner's Sons)
• History:
  • no award
• Biography or Autobiography:
  • W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919 by David Levering Lewis (Henry Holt)
• Poetry:
  • Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa (Wesleyan University Press)
• General Non-Fiction:
  • Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick (Random House)

Arts awards

• Drama:
  • Three Tall Women by Edward Albee (Dutton)
• Music:
  • Of Reminiscences and Reflections by Gunther Schuller (Associated Music Publishers)

Premiered on December 2, 1993, in Louisville, Kentucky. Performed and commissioned by The Louisville Orchestra.