Former BDN photo intern wins Pulitzer

Former Bangor Daily News photo intern Preston Gannaway had just crossed the line from Nebraska into Colorado with all of her possessions in her car when she got a phone call from her former boss at the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire.

“You might want to pull over for this,” Gannaway recalled Monitor editor Felice Belman telling her on the phone Friday.

Belman was speaking quietly, Gannaway said Monday by telephone, but the editor had big news: Gannaway, 30, had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for a series in which she followed a family dealing with cancer.

Gannaway, a native of Charlotte, N.C., spent six weeks at the BDN in the summer of 2003. She would have stayed longer, but she was hired by the Monitor and left Bangor to take the full-time job over the temporary internship.

Last week, Gannaway was headed to Denver, where she was to report to a new job with the Rocky Mountain News on Monday. Given the circumstances, she flew back to Concord on Sunday night.

Belman found out about the award Friday, Gannaway said, and tried to keep things quiet over the weekend.

The awards were announced Monday afternoon at Columbia University in New York.

“Really, it never occurred to me that I would have ever won,” Gannaway said. “I just thought, if I could even be a finalist, that would be awesome. It never occurred to me that I would actually win it.”

Her award-winning 19-photo series, called “Remember Me,” focused on the St. Pierre family of Concord. Gannaway and a Monitor reporter followed the family in the months before and after the death of mother Carolynne St. Pierre, who was dealing with terminal cancer.

“They were just so open to sharing [their story] with us,” Gannaway said. “We got close to them.”

Although she didn’t spend a lot of time in Maine, Gannaway recalled covering a Phish concert in Limestone that summer.

“That was a lot of fun,” she said. “It was the only time I’ve ever seen a live moose.”

Monitor editor Mike Pride was co-chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board, but did not participate in the judging for feature photography because Gannaway was a finalist, according to the Monitor’s Web site.

The awards are given by Columbia University on the recommendation of the 18-member Pulitzer board.