Living Canon

Pulitzer Prizes 2007: Complete list of winners

The 2007 Pulitzer Prizes delivered a selection of winners that felt distinctly attuned to the anxieties and moral questions of their moment. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road claimed the Fiction prize, bringing his unflinching vision of post-apocalyptic devastation to the award’s most prestigious category. Meanwhile, Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 won General Nonfiction, offering a meticulously researched examination of the intelligence failures and geopolitical currents that preceded America’s defining tragedy. These weren’t comfortable books—they insisted readers confront difficult landscapes, whether imagined or historical.

The drama and poetry categories showcased equally compelling work. David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole brought theatrical audiences into the private grief of a family navigating an unthinkable loss, earning the Drama prize with its tender, unsentimental approach to tragedy. Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard, which won the Poetry prize, drew on her family history and Louisiana’s complicated past to explore themes of memory, identity, and displacement. In Biography, Debby Applegate’s The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher revived the story of one of the nineteenth century’s most electrifying—and controversial—figures. Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff’s The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation rounded out the History category, documenting journalism’s crucial role in America’s civil rights movement.

Here are the complete 2007 Pulitzer Prize winners:

Biography

Drama

Fiction

General Nonfiction

History

Poetry