2007 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

The anticipated announcement of the Pulitzer Prize winners has finally come.

One of America's most popular and reclusive authors, Cormac McCarthy has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction it was announced today.

Cormac McCarthy no aged 73 won the one of the most prestigious literary prizes for his tenth book, 'The Road'. The story is centred on a father and son's attempts to live in a post war environment.

A few weeks ago Oprah choose 'The Road' for her extremely popular book club. It is a most unusual choice for the book club and will certainly surprise many of Oprah's followers.

The prize for the Pulitzer winning book is $10,000 dollars.

In the music category 77 year old Ornette Coleman took the coveted prize. Ornette is a Jazz saxophonist and the prize was given to him for a live recoding called, 'Sound Grammer'.

A number of different Pulitzer prizes were awarded for achievements in Journalism. American newspaper, 'The Wall Street Journal' scooped two of the top prizes. These two prizes were the prize for public service and the paper's excellent reporting of China.

The public service Pulitzer was specifically awarded for 'The Wall Street Journal's' articles about corporate stock options in the United States. These stories caused a huge shake up of American companies as a number of investigations were initiated.

Paul Steiger, the Managing editor of 'The Wall Street Journal' spoke about these tremendous achievements. He said the stories about the stock options, " resulted in more than 100 companies coming under investigation and many companies having to restate their earnings."

The excellent reporting of the Associated Press was also honoured with a Pulitzer prize. The prize was for photography that caught a breaking news story. The photo that won was taken in Israel during the removal of settlers from the West Bank. In the photo Israeli police in full riot gear are seen trying to remove settlers. The photo captures one woman on her own, pushing against the advancing police in an attempt to keep them back. The Associated Press photographer who captured this moving moment, Oded Bality, said "I feel like I kissed the moon".

An unusual turn of events occurred in the drama category. There were three short listed contenders given to the judges to pick the winner from. However, the judges were unable to come to a decision. As a result a completely different drama work that had not been included on the shortlist was chosen as the winner of the Pulitzer in the drama category. This prize went to a play by David Lindsay called 'Abaire's Rabbit Hole'.

When speaking about his surprise win the writer of the play said, "I had processed months ago that it wasn't on the cards. So I was just going about my day trying desperately write a lyric for Shrek."

Winners of other Pulitzer categories are as follows. Debby Applegate won the biography prize for her book about Henry Ward Beecher. The poetry prize went to a poem by Natasha Trethewy called 'Native Guard'. The prize for general non-fiction went of Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright.

The Pulitzer prize has been awarded since 1911.

Sources
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6563291.stm
http://breakingnews.iol.ie/entertainment/story.asp?j=216539378&p=zy654xx84
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6564260,00.html