Aretha Franklin receives posthumous Pulitzer prize, becoming first woman to earn the honorary distinction

Special citation highlights Franklin's 'indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades'

Aretha Franklin performs onstage during the Elton John AIDS Foundation's New York Fall Gala at the Cathedral of St John the Divine on 7 November, 2017 in New York City. ((Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images))

Aretha Franklin has earned a Pulitzer Prize, which cites her posthumously for her extraordinary career.

The Queen of Soul, who died last summer, has thus become the first woman to be singled out for an honorary Pulitzer.

The distinction has previously been awarded to Bob Dylan and John Coltrane, among others.

Franklin's special citation highlights "her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades" on the Pulitzer Prizes' website.

Pulitzer judges also awarded Richard Powers' innovative novel The Overstory the fiction prize and named David W Blight's 900-page Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom the best work of history.

On Monday, the biography prize went to Jeffrey C Stewart's The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, and the drama award to Fairview, by Jackie Sibblies Drury.

Eliza Griswold's Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America won for general nonfiction, and Ellen Reid's opera p r i s m for music. The poetry award was given to Forrest Gander's elegiac Be With.

This year's honorees were announced on Monday at Columbia University in New York. The journalism awards recognise exceptional work in 2018 by US newspapers, magazines and online outlets. There are 14 categories for reporting, photography, criticism, commentary and cartoons.

Arts prizes are awarded in seven categories, including fiction, drama and music. The first journalism prizes were awarded in 1917, and they have come to be considered the field's most prestigious honour in the US.

Additional reporting by agencies