Add "Pulitzer Finalist" to the growing list of accolades Associate Professor of Writing Anelise Chen's Clam Down: A Metamorphosis (One World, 2025) has stacked up since its release.
The experimental memoir in which a woman retreats into her shell in the aftermath of her divorce has already been named one of the best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune, Vulture, and Electric Lit. Inspired by Chen's stint as "Mollusk Correspondent" for The Paris Review, the protagonist must reckon with her clam-like tendencies after she is corporeally transformed by her mother’s typo insisting that she "clam down."
Chen is the author of So Many Olympic Exertions (Kaya Press), a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. In 2019, she was named a 5 Under 35 Honoree from the National Book Foundation. She is involved with various grants through Columbia World Projects, the Climate School, and the Center of Social Difference to further plant literacy in high school students and to bridge scientific and artistic practices.
"A marvel and a delight," Associate Professor Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters, said of Chen’s new memoir. "This is a book that will stay with me forever."
Clam Down will be available in paperback on June 2, 2026.
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theatre Vinson Cunningham has been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his cultural criticism in The New Yorker, where he has served as a staff writer since 2016.
His essays such as "Donald Trump Plays Church" and "Mister Lonely, the New TV Hero" were lauded by the prize committee for their "sophisticated, accessible" coverage of the media, and how it reflects shifts in American culture and politics.
Since 2018, Cunningham has served as a critic for The New Yorker, writing about theatre, television, and more. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2024 and 2025, and was awarded the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for 2021-2022. In 2020, he was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for his Profile of the comedian Tracy Morgan. He teaches at the Yale School of Art and Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and is a co-host of The New Yorker’s weekly podcast, Critics at Large. His début novel, Great Expectations (Hogarth, 2025) came out in 2024.
Awarded annually since 1917, the Pulitzer Prize recognizes outstanding achievements across 23 categories in journalism and the arts.
