For all the prestige that comes with having won a Pulitzer Prize, there's very little glamour in the actual winning. There's no glitzy ceremony, no red carpet, no opportunity to thank your agent or stylist. Rather, on an appointed April day, at exactly 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the administrator of the prizes gives a press conference in the Journalism Building at Columbia University announcing the winner and two other finalists in all 21 prize categories. When winners learn that they've won—soon after 3, one assumes, and via the AP wire or the Pulitzer website—is also when they first formally learn they were even in the running and against whom they competed. A few weeks later, there's a modest luncheon, at which—by the terms of Joseph Pulitzer's will—Columbia's president, who has nothing to do with selecting the prizewinners, presents the prizes. Even then, there's no shiny statuette. The only official, mandated-by-the-will piece of hardware presented is for the winner of the public-service Pulitzer—which goes not to an individual but to a newspaper. In the other 20 categories, winners get a certificate and, in recent years, a commemorative Tiffany's tchotchke. And—oh yeah—some money: since 2001, $7,500.

Of course, there's still that prestige. When this year's batch of Pulitzer Prize-winners is announced this Monday at 3, the selected journalists, authors, photographers, composers, and playwrights will suddenly become part of an elite fraternity. Maybe it will help them in their careers. Maybe it will help them score cocktail-party invitations. At the very least, as the hoary truism notes, each new winner will suddenly know the first line of his or her obituary. But before we worry about how this year's winners will make their transitions to the next world, we wanted to find out how receiving a Pulitzer Prize can change one's life in this one. Here's what an assorted crew of past prizewinners had to say:

"I had wanted to win a Pulitzer to impress my steelworker father, who was perplexed by my literary interests and disappointed that I wasn't rich. Of course, fate so arranges these matters that when I did win, my Dad had been dead for six months from cancer. I won the Pulitzer when I was technically only an editor at The Washington Post Book World. The prize gave me the chance to split my workweek between editing and writing, and eventually brought me a regular anchored column. That, in turn, allowed me to write personal essays and appreciations of neglected books of the past. That freedom—within limits—to discuss all kinds of books was the greatest benefit of the prize."
—Michael Dirda of The Washington Post, winner of the 1993 criticism prize for his book reviews at the Post.

"It was a sublime moment in my life."
—Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, winner of the 1975 criticism prize for his film reviews at the Sun-Times.

"I was thrilled of course, but winning the Pulitzer for commentary is different than winning it for a play or a book. You can't keep running that 'Pulitzer-prize-winning' column. The next day I had to get up and do it again."
—Ellen Goodman of The Boston Globe, winner of the 1980 commentary prize for her columns at the Globe.

"There is no question, winning the Pulitzer made my day. But after the first impact wears off, you don't think about it much. Then every so often, you do. And it's like slipping into a warm bath."
—Alex S. Jones, director of Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. He won the 1987 specialized-reporting prize for his New York Times article "The Fall of the House of Bingham," which examined a powerful newspaper family's bickering and how it led to the sale of a famed media empire.

"The Pulitzer Prize? It's gotten me laid a few times. It's landed me a job or two. But what do these things really mean? I think of James Agee all the time, whose book we followed to win the prize. The poor son of a bitch was dead when he got his Pulitzer. I'm glad I was alive and young enough to enjoy it. I guess it means the most in the desolation of the night when I'm struggling with the beast of the current book. I look at the wall and the prize and think, 'Goddamn. How the hell did that happen?' And that gets me to the sunrise."
—Reporter and author Dale Maharidge, co-winner of the 1990 general-nonfiction prize for his book And Their Children After Them. His new book, Homeland, about nationalism in post-9/11 America, will be published this summer.

"The $1,000 did not change my life. Nor has it led (to date) to any bestsellers. But the 'Pulitzer Prize-winning' epithet lengthened my name, stoked my self-confidence, and gave me a calling: To bring academic historical research to vivid life in books aimed at the whole reading public. It also gives me this chance to plug my new book."
—Walter A. McDougall, professor of history and international relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He won the 1986 history prize for his book …the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. He recently published Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History 1585-1828.

"Winning the Pulitzer seemed to give me a lot more credibility, some of which was actually deserved. People who could not give a rat's ascot what I had to say before I won suddenly were regarding me as some sort of expert. That was fun. I can't wait to win another one."
—Clarence Page of The Chicago Tribune, winner of the 1989 commentary prize, for his local and national-affairs columns in the Tribune.

"Telling a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle that I first celebrated the news by buying a white chocolate chip cookie has become the anecdote of choice with which I am introduced when I give lectures. How has it changed my life more generally? I suppose I would say, (a) by making everything that was already good better, and (b) by giving me the experience of what it's like to win the big one—whatever that may be in one's field of endeavor. Now if only the Stanford men's basketball team could have the same feeling."
—Jack Rakove, professor of history and American studies at Stanford University. He won the 1997 history prize for his book Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution.

"It's been said that the reason more people don't have nervous breakdowns is that they aren't smart enough, which may be true. I'd always heard that one of the possible ramifications of a major literary award was total artistic paralysis, but the two years since my Pulitzer have been among my most productive (I've managed to write several film scripts and half a novel). What do such awards really mean? 'You're really good'? Possibly. Or, 'Keep working, stupid.' The latter, almost surely. Either way, you need caller I.D."
—Novelist Richard Russo, winner of the 2002 fiction prize for Empire Falls.

"I can't say the Pulitzer changed my life—I was 48 and had been with the Times 23 years by then—but it certainly changed the way people introduced me. To this day, I'm surprised by how often folks will include 'he won a Pulitzer' in even the most perfunctory social introduction. And I'm even more surprised by how often folks who are not particularly media-savvy immediately perk up and show a sudden respect for you."
—David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times, winner of the 1991 criticism prize for media columns at the Times.

"It was heady unwrapping that Tiffany crystal award in the marble rotunda of Columbia University's Low Library. I was in awe of the pantheon whose refined ranks I had somehow infiltrated. That frightening glow began to fade in the men's room, where I found one of my fellow recipients hunched over the sink, casually scrubbing his dentures."
—Bob Sipchen of the Los Angeles Times, co-winner with Alex Raksin of the 2002 editorial-writing prize for his editorials at the Times.

"My Pulitzer arrived at a propitious moment—three months before the decision by Time-Life to fold The Washington Star, where I was working. I'm sure that having a Pulitzer in my pocket helped me move seamlessly over to The Washington Post, where I've been ever since. Other than that, I can't say it's had a huge effect on my life, and my feelings about it are mixed: I'm proud and grateful to have it, of course, but distressed that Pulitzers have gone to so many undeserving people while so many deserving ones have been passed over. It's a crapshoot."
—Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post, winner of the 1981 criticism prize for his book reviews at The Washington Star.

Jesse Oxfeld is the editor-in-chief of mediabistro.com. Jill Singer is the deputy editor.