Harper Lee Dead at 89

Hometown sources confirm the story
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 19, 2016 9:43 AM CST
Harper Lee Dead at 89
In this Aug. 20, 2007, file photo, author Harper Lee smiles during a ceremony honoring the four new members of the Alabama Academy of Honor at the Capitol in Montgomery, Ala.   (AP Photo/Rob Carr, File)

Harper Lee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Kill a Mockingbird, is dead at the age of 89, multiple sources from her Alabama hometown tell AL.com. Lee, born in Monroeville as Nelle Harper Lee in 1926, moved to New York in 1949 and got a job as an airlines reservations clerk while writing on the side. She submitted the Mockingbird manuscript eight years later. LB Lippincott & Co. asked her to rewrite it, and it was eventually published in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize the next year, and the movie version was released in 1962.

Lee returned to Monroeville to help her ailing older sister, Alice. In 2007, Lee herself suffered a stroke. No further details of her death or any services that might be planned have yet been announced. A Broadway version of Mockingbird is on the way, and Lee's lawyer says there might be a third Lee book out there that bridges the events of Mockingbird and the recently published—and controversialGo Set a Watchman. (More Harper Lee stories.)

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