The Harper Lee Award for Alabama's Distinguished Writer of the Year is an annual award recognizing a writer who was born in Alabama or has spent their formative years there. It is named after

Harper Lee Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926February 19, 2016) was an American novelist best known for her 1960 novel ''To Kill a Mockingbird''. It won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Lee has received numero ...

, whose ''To Kill A Mockingbird'' has sold over 30 million copies. The Harper Lee Award was established in 1998 and was awarded to Albert Murray.

Recipients

* 1998 - Albert Murray * 1999 -

Madison Jones Madison Percy Jones (1925-2012) was a novelist born in Nashville, Tennessee. He published almost a dozen novels, and was considered "one of the major figures of contemporary southern letters". Biography Madison Jones was born in Nashville, Tenn ...

* 2000 - Helen Norris * 2001 - Sena Jeter Naslund * 2002 -

Mary Ward Brown Mary Ward Brown (June 18, 1917 – May 14, 2013) was an American short story writer and memoirist. Her works largely feature Alabama as a setting and have received several awards. Early life Brown was born on June 18, 1917 in Hamburg, Alabama. ...

* 2003 - Rodney Jones * 2004 -

Sonia Sanchez Sonia Sanchez (born Wilsonia Benita Driver; September 9, 1934) is an American poet, writer, and professor. She was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and has written over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essay ...

* 2005 - Andrew Highway * 2006 -

Wayne Greenhaw Harold Wayne Greenhaw (February 17, 1940 – May 31, 2011) was an American writer and journalist. The author of 22 books who chronicled changes in the American South from the civil rights movement to the rise of a competitive Republican Party, h ...

* 2007 - William Cobb * 2008 -

Rebecca Gilman Rebecca Gilman (born 1965 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American playwright. Education She attended Middlebury College, graduated from Birmingham-Southern College, and earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop at the Univ ...

* 2009 -

Rick Bragg Rick Bragg (born July 26, 1959) is an American journalist and writer known for non-fiction books, especially those about his family in Alabama. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 recognizing his work at ''The New York Times''. Early life Bragg wa ...

* 2010 -

Carolyn Haines Carolyn Haines (born May 12, 1953 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi), who uses the pseudonyms R.B. Chesterton, Caroline Burnes, and Lizzie Hart, is a prolific mystery author and former journalist specializing in mysteries set in the Mississippi Delt ...

* 2011 -

Winston Groom Winston Francis Groom Jr. (March 23, 1943 – September 17, 2020) was an American novelist and non-fiction writer. He is best known for his novel '' Forrest Gump'' (1986), which became a cultural phenomenon after being adapted as a 1994 film of ...

* 2012 -

Fannie Flagg Fannie Flagg (born Patricia Neal; September 21, 1944) is an American actress, comedian and author. She is best known as a semi-regular panelist on the 1973–1982 versions of the game show ''Match Game'' and for the 1987 novel ''Fried Green Toma ...

* 2013 -

Gay Talese Gaetano "Gay" Talese (; born February 7, 1932) is an American writer. As a journalist for ''The New York Times'' and ''Esquire'' magazine during the 1960s, Talese helped to define contemporary literary journalism and is considered, along with T ...

* 2014 -

Mark Childress Mark Childress (born 1957 in Monroeville, Alabama) is an American novelist and Southern writer. Life Childress grew up in Ohio, Indiana, Mississippi, and Louisiana. He graduated from the University of Alabama, where he was a member of the Mall ...

* 2015 -

Hank Lazer Hank Lazer (b. San Jose, California) is an American poet and critic who teaches at the University of Alabama. Biography Lazer received an A.B. in English from Stanford University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees the University of Virginia. He has been ...

* 2016 -

E. O. Wilson Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, entomologist and writer. According to David Attenborough, Wilson was the world's leading expert in his specialty of myrmecology, the study of an ...

* 2017 - Brad Watson * 2018 -

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (born 1967) is an American poet and novelist, and a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. She has published five collections of poetry and a novel. Her 2020 collection ''The Age of Phillis'' reexamines the l ...

* 2019 - Daniel Wallace * 2020 - Patti Callahan Henry * 2021 -

Angela Johnson Angela Johnson may also refer to: *Angela Johnson (basketball) (born 1953), Canadian Olympic basketball player *Angela Johnson (writer) (born 1961), children's author *Angela Davis Johnson, American painter *Angela Jonsson (born 1990), Indian model ...

References

{{Reflist American literary awards Alabama literature 1998 establishments in Alabama Awards established in 1998 To Kill a Mockingbird