Pitts is a bestselling author. His first book, Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood was published in 2006. Pitts’s first novel, Before I Forget was released in March 2009, and earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly. The novel centers on a faded soul singer whose early-onset Alzheimer’s compels him to reconnect with his father and son. Pitts’s third book, Forward from This Moment: Selected Columns, 1994-2008 was published in August 2009. It is a selection of Pitts’s columns from the Miami Herald.

Pitts gained national recognition for his widely circulated column of September 12, 2001, "We'll Go Forward From This Moment," in which he described the toughness of the American spirit in the face of the September 11 attacks.

In June 2007, Pitts was the subject of a campaign of death threats and harassment by neo-Nazis including Bill White angry at a column he wrote about a white couple who were raped and murdered by five black assailants in Knoxville, Tennessee. In his column addressing the murders, Pitts wrote, "I am [...] unkindly disposed toward the crackpots, incendiaries and flat-out racists who have chosen this tragedy upon which to take an obscene and ludicrous stand. I have four words for them and any other white Americans who feel themselves similarly victimized: Cry me a river."

More death threats were made in April 2008 before his appearance at the University of Puget Sound.