Mark Lamster wins Pulitzer Prize for Criticism

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Mark Lamster wins the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism

Mark Lamster, longtime architecture critic of The Dallas Morning News and author of the forthcoming book Welcome to Paradox City, has been awarded the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.

Lamster was recognized for “his rigorous and passionate architecture criticism, using wit and expertise to amplify his opinions and advocate for city residents.” His series of columns about downtown Dallas, especially the fate of Dallas City Hall, sparked civic debate and revealed the often-invisible ways that architecture shapes a city and its culture from its founding, to the present, and onward into the future.

The criticism that earned Lamster the Pulitzer Prize is collected in Welcome to Paradox City, a first-of-its-kind history of Dallas through the city’s most significant buildings. Through an exceptional blend of architectural history, social history and critical writing, Mark Lamster takes readers from the sun-scorched origins of Dallas as a remote outpost on the Texas frontier, tracing its development into the dynamic, if imperfect, metropolis we know today. 

Welcome to Paradox City will be available in hardcover from La Reunion, an imprint of Deep Vellum Publishing, on August 4, 2026. Pre-order is available now via the Deep Vellum website and wherever books are sold.


Praise for WELCOME TO PARADOX CITY:

“No one writes with as much passion about Dallas architecture as Mark Lamster. Who will ever forget his great tirade during the fight over City Hall’s future? Or what about his lovely ode to the little-known Grand Lodge of the Knights of Pythias? Lamster is a true treasure whose writing has defined Dallas, for better or worse.” —Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly

“Brash, inventive, optimistic—Mark Lamster’s adjectives for threatened Dallas City Hall could easily serve as the tagline for this book. Lamster uses his characteristic wit and ear for a yarn to make the characters, conflicts, and beauties of a diverse, still-expanding metropolis come alive, offering a complex look at a city too often dismissed as all shine, no substance.” —Alexandra Lange, Pulitzer-Prize winning critic and author of Meet Me by the Fountain


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La Reunion was founded in Dallas, Texas in 2019 as an imprint of Deep Vellum. Named after the utopian socialist colony that formed in Dallas in 1855, La Reunion focuses on local, community‑driven literature anchored in Texas identity and history. We publish memoirs, essays, regional histories, and place based fiction about Texas or by Texas adjacent authors.

Deep Vellum is a nonprofit publishing house and literary arts organization with the mission to bring the world into conversation through literature. Founded in 2013, Deep Vellum has expanded to encompass six distinct publishing imprints, including Dalkey Archive Press, and is now the largest publisher of translated literature in the United States.


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For rights inquiries, contact Sarah McEachern: sm@deepvellum.org 

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FRONTLIST | Aug 4, 2026

9781646054404 | Hardcover

$27.95 USD

BISAC: History / United States / State & Local / Southwest (AZ, NM, OK, TX)

  • Architecture / History

  • Architecture / Criticism

  • Architecture / Regional

250 pages | 8.5x5.5 in

B&W Photography 

Cover design by Justin Childress.

WIll Evans