WHAT HAS LIFE BEEN LIKE for Kennedy School Lecturer Samantha Power since winning the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for her book “A Problem From Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide? Power, the former executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights, sums it up in two words: definitely busy.

You once said it would take a long time for you to internalize your name with the Pulitzer. Has a year been long enough?
It’s been almost a year now. It’s kind of scary. Sometimes I look at it [the framed award] and think, what’s that? Is that my undergraduate diploma? Then I’m like, “Oh my god. It’s the Pulitzer Prize!” I’m used to it now. I’m used to people saying, “She’s the winner of ….” But I’m still exactly the same. My opinion of myself is identical to what it was on April 2, when they made the announcement.

It’s been a real boon in terms of my own “oomph,” my ability to draw attention to areas not covered. But it hasn’t done what I’d expected. If you told me last March, “You’re going to win the Pulitzer Prize next month,” I would have assumed that my book would become a best-seller. Isn’t that what happens when it’s anointed in that way? That didn’t happen. It became a best-seller for like a week, but it’s hard to find in bookstores. It’s a book that I’ve had trouble getting people to read. That frustrates me a lot.

This book was not a bunt — I’m a baseball fanatic. It wasn’t a way to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. I was trying to get the U.S. government to change its foreign policy. I need people to read it — for them to learn from the book’s lessons that I think have nothing to do with genocide and everything to do with morality, foreign policy, America and its role in the world, and being an individual working within an institution where you don’t agree with the general direction.

The book has a life. It’s chugging along. It’s not like people aren’t reading it. But it’s changed my life. It hasn’t changed what I was trying to change, which is incredibly arrogant to say that one could even aspire to that, but what’s the point otherwise? My friend and I have a motto: “Fire extinguishers for the Holocaust, cocktail umbrellas for the rain.” You know there’s no way you’re going to stay dry, but you have to believe that you can go out with only these tools.

People say to me, “Your next book, they’re going to make tens of thousands of copies with all kinds of
promotions because people know you’re a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.” That’s when I say, “You don’t understand. I wasn’t bunting the guy over. This was it.”

The Atlantic Monthly said you “spin” through life now.
I’m definitely busy. My book came out in March 2002, and April 2003, it won the Pulitzer. It got great reviews along the way, but it was at that point [post Pulitzer] that a lot of people who hadn’t wanted to talk to me about the book before suddenly wanted to. That is a good difference that the Pulitzer makes. So what do you do if you see your role as continuing to explore and add new ideas, but you really care about changing American foreign policy? You really care about seeing genocide stopped? I’ve struggled with how to balance pushing the agenda of the last book and yet also being ready to take advantage of the platform I now have to add new substance. It’s hard for me to say no to good people around the country who want to have a conversation. The demands are overwhelming. But the world is moving so quickly, and when one has the opportunity to speak critically and at a critical time, it’s hard to pass up those opportunities. I’m really struggling. I’m not sleeping much.

Are you still living in Winthrop?
I am. It’s my savior.

Do more students want to take your class now?
The only class I’m teaching this semester is on U.S. foreign policy and it’s packed, which is great. The first day of class, when they were coming out of the ceiling, I said, “Wow. I can see the difference a Pulitzer makes.” It was gratifying last year. I’ll never for-
get that day. I had a decent-sized class, 60 or 70 students. The Pulitzer happened. It really blew me away. It was like time stopped. It was so shocking. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to enjoy it here because I was immediately on the road promoting. I was still in the scavenger mindset that no one would buy the book who I hadn’t handed the book to in person, or that my mother hadn’t. That was my attitude all along.

You did your own book tour.
Basic [Books] sent me to Washington and Los Angeles, but I did Idaho and Louisiana and Georgia — all the other places. We have to take the red states seriously. I came back to the Kennedy School the next Monday. A week had passed already. I was, like, “Pulitzer Smoolitzer.” But I walked into Starr and these students, who completely took my class because of their interest in the subject, were there, and they had gotten me this gargantuan plant. [laughs] If they knew me, they’d know it was going to be dead within 48 hours. I walked in. They gave me a standing ovation. I burst into tears. It was so touching because they felt like it was their thing. It’s one of those really rare experiences. I felt like I was sharing it with people who wanted to be part of this organically.

When you got the call from your editor, you were doing an interview. That must have been crazy trying to keep it together.
It was crazy. I was with the first-ever African official, a judge, to come out and say he had HIV. I had been trying to get the interview for six months. I was so excited to meet with him, and then the phone rang. Why I answered it is beyond me. It was Frank [her editor]. He said he was wondering if he could take me to dinner Wednesday night to celebrate. I said, “Celebrate what?” I thought, what is there to celebrate? We’re at war. A friend of mine, Michael Kelley, had just been killed the week before in Iraq. It was a grueling time. He said, “To celebrate the Pulitzer you just won.” It was a true “do-not-compute” moment. I was next to this judge, leaning against his chest. You go weak. It was too weird. It’s like they’ve told you you’ve just won the lottery. It just doesn’t happen.

Did you really corner Pedro Martinez at a party and talk to him about genocide?
I did, and I have the photos to prove it. It was about as mortifying a performance on my part as his 7th inning performance of the 7th game against the Yankees in the playoffs. Jeff Sachs had a fundraiser for Dominican students at the Kennedy School. Pedro was there. I went up, and the next thing I knew, there was Hutu and Tutsi coming out of my mouth. Pedro was confused as to who this raving lady was, but he was very gracious. As I tried to explain to him, there is logic to the links I was making. One of the points of my book centers on the issue of will. I told Pedro that he was sort of my poster child for perfectionism and what it means to commit to something. It was a little bit of a stretch.

Do you have less time to follow the Red Sox now?
I don’t have season tickets, but I go to 30 or 40 games a year and down to spring training. Last year I probably went to more games than that. Because Harvard is here and Winthrop is on the other side of Fenway Park, I have a hard time driving by the lights and not popping in. It’s also hard when I’m overseas, which I am a lot. Luckily, they have this new Web service, MLB.com. You log on and pay $19.95 a year. Wherever you are in the world, you can get the games as if they’re on the radio. I listen from very obscure places — Rwanda, Zimbabwe, South Africa.

Are you working on a book about AIDS now?
I’m not doing AIDS. I did a number of magazine articles on AIDS-related matters and I’m very interested — it’s the singular crisis of our time, I believe. But for me, no question stuck out that needed answering that I, as a nonhealth person, felt I could answer. I’m doing two things. I’ve been spending a lot of time reading Hannah Arendt and her writings on evil and justice and terror. I’m going to write a short book about her ideas on those themes as they apply to today. It’s a book about American foreign policy and citizenship, but through her. It’s a difficult book because she’s a tough writer and very controversial, but she’s the greatest female philosopher of all time, I think. Certainly one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. She writes about dark times, and you could argue that these are dark times.

And the second?
The second book is more like the previous one. It’s on the causes and consequences of forgetfulness in American foreign policy. When we make the case for war in Iraq and we don’t mention our past involvement with Saddam, how does that affect the way people hear our arguments for the case for war? When we go to Latin America and enter into trade negotiations, to what extent do Cold War coups and allegiances affect the way people hear our arguments? It looks at why we rarely look back on things we’ve done. Is there a legacy of nonremembering? Is there a cost? I’m excited to now have the energy again to think about traveling, to go back underground, to be reporting. I’m so ready to do that. I believe in “A Problem from Hell,” but I believe that the book now has its own life. The reality is, these next books are going to have a lot of expectations around them, so it’ll be much harder for me to come out of nowhere.

Did you do anything fun with the prize money ($7,500)?
I bought scalped tickets to game four of the Yankee-Red Sox play-off series. I treated three very close friends.

Do you believe in the curse of the bambino?
No. I believe that eventually, if you work hard enough, good things can be made to happen. I’m a fundamental believer that there’s nothing you can’t turn around. One of the T-shirts available for sale around Fenway says: Everybody can have a bad century. That’s my attitude on genocide and American foreign policy. OK. We had a bad century. Now it’s time to turn things around. This is a tongue-and-cheek connection, but I believe that a sense of fortitude against the odds is important to bring to everything. There’s just no point otherwise. I just can’t imagine having another kind of attitude.