Lawrence Wright Wins the Pulitzer

It was announced today that Austin-based scribe Lawrence Wright was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. This is not the only award his book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, has won, but it is one of the more illustrious honors it has received. Wright is currently a staff writer for the New York Times New Yorker, has written for Texas Monthly, and helped pen the screenplay for the Denzel Washington vehicle The Siege. He also plays keyboard in the local blues band, Who Do.

[Lawrence Wright Bio]
[Statesman]

Other notable Pulitzer Prize winners for 2007 (with no Austin ties that we know of):

• Music - Sound Grammar by native Texan and jazz legend Ornette Coleman. John Coltrane was also awarded (posthumously, of course) this year for his contribution to jazz.
  
• Fiction - The Road by Cormac McCarthy. This novel is the winner of The Morning News Tournament of Books and was recently chosen for Oprah's Book Club, and we still haven't read it yet. With such a range of accolades, you'd think we'd be on that.
  

Photo of Wright from lawrencewright.com