Harper Lee

Author, Pulitzer Prize Recipient. She is best remembered for her classic best-selling American novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1960) that won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1961. Born Nelle Harper Lee, she was the youngest of four children whose father was a newspaper editor who also practiced law and served in the Alabama State Legislature. Her mother suffered from mental illness and was housebound during her childhood years. She developed an interest in English literature while attending Monroe County High School and following her graduation in 1944, she attended Huntington College in Montgomery, Alabama for a year before transferring to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but did not graduate. In 1949 she relocated to New York City, New York, working as an airline reservation agent and writing in her spare time and by 1957 she completed her manuscript entitled "Go Set a Watchman" and sought to have it published. After going through several reiterations, it was finally published three years later under the new title "To Kill a Mockingbird". The novel was inspired by the racist attitudes and perceptions in her hometown during the 1930s, as seen through the eyes of two children. In 1962 the book was adapted into a film by the same name that featured Gregory Peck as the main character 'Atticus Finch'. It received eight Academy Awards nominations and won three, including Best Actor (Peck), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Art Direction. She went on to accompany her childhood friend and author Truman Capote to Holcomb, Kansas to aid him in researching material for his book "In Cold Blood" (1966) that also became a best-seller. In the 1970s and 1980s, she retreated from public life during which she worked on a nonfiction book involving an Alabama serial killer called "The Reverend" but it was never submitted for publication. In 2007 she suffered a stroke and combined with other health issues, she moved into an assisted living facility. The same year, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush and in 2010 President Barack Obama honored her with a National Medal of Arts award. Her only other published work was "Go Set a Watchmen" (2015) which turned out to be the controversial first draft of "To Kill a Mockingbird." She died of a stroke in her sleep at the age of 89. In films and television, she was portrayed by Catherine Keener in "Capote" (2005), by Sandra Bullock in "Infamous" (2006), and by Tracey Hoyt in the television movie "Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story" (1998).