The Author Of To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, Dies at 89

Nelle Harper Lee, the author of the American classic To Kill A Mockingbird, has died at the age of 89.

The author's first published work, Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961. Published by J.B. Lippincot & Co. in 1960, the book was adapted as a film with incredible turnaround in 1962. The film in turn won several awards, including three Oscars and three Golden Globes.

Born in Monroeville, Alabama in April 1926, Lee moved to New York, NY in 1949 to pursue a writing career. She first submitted the manuscript for her award-winning novel in 1957. Lee never published a follow-up to the novel. A manuscript that by many accounts was considered an un-finished early draft was published controversially in 2015.

Lee's work examined the racial divide in her hometown and across America, using some of her own life experiences to inform the story, though she denied autobiographical elements.

Lee had a stroke in 2007, but recovered and lived a private life for the remainder of her 9 years. She returned to Monroeville, and died in the hometown Friday morning.

(via THR)