Some of the stories that make us the most proud are about Spiders who are determined to push themselves to the next level in their careers. The ones who don’t rest on their laurels, even when that laurel is a Pulitzer.

Journalism grad Chris Hamby, ’08, recently won the 2018 J. Anthony Lukas Award for his book, “Soul Full of Coal Dust: The True Story of an Epic Battle for Justice” — digging further into the topic that earned him the Pulitzer in 2014. Announced by the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, the prestigious $25,000 book award recognizes notable journalists whose nonfiction works demonstrate literary excellence in research and social concern.

“In a devastating and urgent work of investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hamby uncovers the terrifying resurgence of black lung disease in Appalachia and the systematic deprivation of benefits to ailing coal miners,” the judges said.

Hamby, who works as an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for his yearlong investigative series for the Center for Public Integrity, “Breathless and Burdened: Dying from Black Lung, Buried by Law and Medicine.” And in 2017, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his series at BuzzFeed on the investor-state dispute settlement — earning BuzzFeed its first Pulitzer citation.

Congratulations, Chris! We are so proud of you and look forward to hearing about your next accomplishment!