What was the first graphic novel to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize?

"Maus" was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in the Special Awards and Citations – Letters category in 1992, becoming the first graphic novel to receive a Pulitzer. "Maus" won the Pulitzer Prize for offering readers a simple but fitting and relatable distillation of the Holocaust during World War II.The genocide of European Jews was depicted by Art Spiegelman by rendering comic book versions of Nazis drawn as cats and the Jews they slaughtered as mice.

Spiegelman (b. Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman in February 1948 in Stockholm, Sweden) wrote the comic called "Maus". It concerns specific experiences his family faced during the Second World War. It tells the true story of his father Vladek, a Holocaust survivor, and also conveys the complicated relationship between a father and a son.

Spiegelman has become well known as an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate who has almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines "Arcade and Raw" has been very influential, and from 1992 he spent a decade as a contributing artist for "The New Yorker". As an editor, a teacher in New York City, and international lecturer, he still continues to promote a better understanding of comics and greater comics literacy for all people living in the 21st century.