Harper Lee

Nelle Harper Lee was the youngest of four children born to Amasa Coleman Lee, a respected small-town lawyer, and Frances Cunningham (Finch). Lee studied law at the University of Alabama and then moved to New York where she decided to pursue writing. She wrote an early draft of a novel called Go Set a Watchman in 1957, which she then reworked and turned into her first published novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, in 1960. To Kill a Mockingbird became an instant classic, winning the Pulitzer Prize and many other awards. Lee retreated from her fame and moved back to her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. She never published another book (although the original manuscript of Go Set a Watchman was published in 2015), but she helped her friend Truman Capote in his research for In Cold Blood. In 2016, Lee passed away in her sleep in Monroeville at age 89.