Houston columnist reflects on moment she earned her 3rd Pulitzer Prize: 'The feeling was relief'

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- One of the most prestigious awards a publication or a writer can receive is a Pulitzer Prize. And it's rare to get even one.

But a Houston woman now has three Pulitzers, a record matched only by famed writers like Edward Albee and Carl Sandberg.

Lisa Falkenberg is a columnist with the Houston Chronicle, where she's worked since 2005, covering her beloved state of Texas. She was born and raised in Seguin, and was the first member of her family to go to college. Falkenberg was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2014, and won her first Pulitzer in 2015 for a series that uncovered a wrongful conviction in a death penalty case, ultimately freeing him and prompting Texas lawmakers to reform the grand jury system.

ABC13 asked Falkenberg what it felt like to win her first Pulitzer.

"You know, I think the feeling was relief, because at that time, the Chronicle had never won a Pulitzer. And the year before, I was a finalist, and so it kind of got everyone excited," she said.

In 2015, Lisa Falkenberg followed the wrongful conviction of a man who spent 12 years behind bars. She helped to get Alfred Dwayne Brown freed.

While working on what turned out to be her award-winning stories, she got a lot of counsel.

"My colleagues would come by and say, 'This is really good work you're doing. Keep on, keep on,'" Falkenberg recalled. "And then they started mentioning, maybe this is a contender for a Pulitzer. So by the time the awards came around, I felt so much pressure. And so in that moment I just said, okay, it's done. The Chronicle has a Pulitzer."

But she wasn't done, as it turned out. The next Pulitzer in 2022 went to the newspaper's editorial team she headed up, a series of stories looking into voter fraud in Texas in the 2020 elections. Falkenberg knows Texas well, as both a reporter and a resident. She grew up in Seguin. Her dad was a truck driver, and her mom was a homemaker.

"I think they had heard of a Pulitzer, of course, but I had to kind of explain exactly what it was," she says about her parents and siblings. "Normally you say, oh, you know, it's the Oscar of journalism. I think they've always been, you know, really proud of me."

She specifically remembered her dad's advice.

"My father has encouraged me at times. When I was in college, I had a rough patch, and I wasn't sure I wanted to continue with journalism. I wasn't sure that I had what it took. And he just said, 'Yes, you do. This is what you want to do. And don't you dare stop,'" she said.

She took her dad's advice to heart. As head of the paper's editorial board, the team has been nominated twice in four years, a remarkable record. Their latest win this year was for a series of stories on students in poorer neighborhoods who have to cross railroad tracks to get to school. Then, a Milby High School student was killed by a train.

"When that happened, I wish we could have done something to prevent it. But we certainly jumped on that story, covered it, covered who he was, what his friends had to say about him, and just what their lives are like trying to get around trains to get to school and calling for change," she said.

Falkenberg has now gone back to her first love, which is writing columns about issues she cares about. She knows that some topics they've tackled have made readers angry, even threatening.

"The fact is, you have to tell the truth. You have to do the stories that are important to people's lives. And if you don't, the readers, the audience, won't trust you anyway," Falkenberg said.

Even though the Chronicle now has three Pulitzers, Falkenberg says there's nothing like the first time.

"I think that the first one really was a game changer for me, because coming from Seguin, the first in my family to go to college, it was not a foregone conclusion that I'd go to a college even. And I applied to one school, the only one I'd stepped foot on, you know, the University of Texas. Thank God, they let me in," she said.

"That first one, everybody took pride in it. You know, from the security guard to my colleagues there in the newsroom. Everybody had a smile on their face, and there were parties. Yeah, it was really exciting," she said. "One of my daughters said the other day, 'Mom, this third one, it's kind of like the third child.' And I said, 'No, actually, I was super excited about my third child, and I'm excited about this too!'"

And the final reminder of her status as a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner came from her daughter.

"She wanted to know if I had won an award, if I've set a record for the second one. I assured her I had not. And she insists I'm not a real writer until I write a book. So there you go. You just can't. Some people you just can't impress," Falkenberg said.

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