Good handicappers have to understand the full nature of the competition, and here it's handy to know that the Pulitzers have something of an odd process where a "jury" of three people from the literary field (critics, writers, academics) selects three finalists, with the ultimate winner being chosen by the Pulitzer board, which currently includes a single fiction writer, Junot Diaz, who won the Pulitzer in 2008 for "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao."