Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Where in the World Is... Harper Lee

Where in the World is...

Harper Lee

June was the 50th Anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird, so it seems ony right to ask, "Where in the world is Harper Lee.

After the publication of the novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction award in 1961, Lee accompanied Truman Capote to Holcomb, Kansas, helping him research the Clutter family murders. The case and subsequent trial were written about in his famous book In Cold Blood. Since then, although she started and abandoned both a second novel and a nonfiction text, To Kill a Mockingbird remains Lee's only major work.

In more recent years, Lee, now eighty-four years old, travels back and forth between New York City and Monroeville, Alabama. She received an honorary degree from Notre Dame in 2006, and that same year, wrote a letter to Oprah that was published in the July 2006 edition of O Magazine. She also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, a prestigious award that was previously presented to Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair.

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