Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the second largest publisher in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Group. HBG was formed when Hachette Livre purchased the Time Warner Book Group from Time Warner on March 31, 2006.^[1] Its headquarters are in 237 Park Avenue, Midtown Manhattan, New York City.^[2][3] Hachette is considered one of the "Big Six" publishing companies, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Putnam, HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster.^[4]

History[link]

The earliest publisher to eventually become part of the Hachette Book Group was Little, Brown and Company, founded in 1837, acquired by Time Inc. in 1968.^{[citation needed]}
Warner Communications had acquired the Paperback Library in 1970 to form Warner Books.^[5] In 1982, CBS Publications sold off Popular Library to Warner.^[6] In April 1985, Warner Books relaunched Popular Library starting out with five other books plus the reprint of Question of Upbringing continuing each month with the follow volumes from A Dance to the Music of Time series by Anthony Powell. Additional, two books would be issued per month from Popular's new imprint, Questar, for science fiction.^[7] Time merged with Warner Communications to form Time Warner in 1989.^[8] Publisher Macdonald & Co. was bought in 1992 to become part of the Time Warner Book Group UK, and in 1996 the various branches merged to become Time Warner Trade Publishing, later renamed to Time Warner Book Group.^{[citation needed]} In 2003, Time Warner attempted to sell the Book Group but failed to get high enough bids. In March 2006, Time Warner completed the sale of Book Group to Lagardère to be place under its Hachette Livre book publishing arm.^[9] Its Warner Books subsidiary renamed itself Grand Central Publishing in March 2006. Grand Central also launched a more literary imprint, Twelve, under former Random House editor in chief Jonathan Karp.^[10] On February 5, 2010, Hachette announced that it would adopt an agency pricing model for its ebooks.^[11]

Current imprints[link]

Hachette has acquired a number of publishing brands aimed at different markets, and these brands themselves contain sub-imprints which are used to publish to an even more targeted audience. Imprints include:^[12]

Inactive imprints[link]

Many imprints have been acquired by the Hachette Group and the companies that were merged to form the group. Many are no longer active.

• Abacus
• Paperback Library (called the Warner Paperback Library after acquisition by Warner Communications in 1970)
• Questar Science Fiction
• Warner Aspect

Bestselling authors[link]

References[link]

See also[link]

• The Big Six book publishers: Random House, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Putnam, Macmillan and HarperCollins

External links[link]

	New York City portal
	Companies portal
	Books portal

• Hachette Book Group website

This article about a United States publishing company is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

William Kotzwinkle (born 1938^[1] or 1943^[2]) is an American novelist, children's writer, and screenwriter. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He has won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel for Doctor Rat in 1977, and has also won the National Magazine Award for fiction. Kotzwinkle wrote the novelization of the screenplay for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Novels[link]

• The Firemen (1969)
• Elephant Boy: A Story of the Stone Age (1970)
• The Day the Gang Got Rich (1970)
• The Ship That Came Down The Gutter (1970)
• The Return of Crazy Horse (1971)
• Hermes 3000 (1972)
• The Supreme, Superb, Exalted and Delightful, One and Only Magic Building (1973)
• The Fan Man (1974)
• Night Book (1974)
• Up the Alley with Jack and Joe (1974)
• Swimmer in the Secret Sea (1975) (actually a short story published in mass-market paperback format, as a sort of chapbook)
• Doctor Rat (1976)
• The Leopard's Tooth (1976)
• Fata Morgana (1977)
• The Ants Who Took Away Time (1978)
• Herr Nightingale And the Satin Woman (1978)
• Dream of Dark Harbor: A Ghostly Sea Story (1979)
• The Nap Master (1979)
• Jack in the Box (1980) (later re-titled as Book of Love at the release of the movie based on it)
• Christmas at Fontaine's (1982)
• Superman III (1983) (film novelization)
• Great World Circus (1983)
• Queen of Swords (1983)
• Seduction in Berlin (1985)
• The Exile (1987)
• The Midnight Examiner (1989)
• The Game of Thirty (1994)
• The Million-Dollar Bear (1995)
• The Bear Went Over the Mountain (1996)
• The Amphora Project (2005)

Collections[link]

• Elephant Bangs Train (1971)
• The Oldest Man: And Other Timeless Stories (1971)
• Trouble in Bugland: A Collection of Inspector Mantis Mysteries (1983)
• Jewel of the Moon (1985)
• Hearts of Wood: And Other Timeless Tales (1986)
• The Hot Jazz Trio (1989)
• Tales from the Empty Notebook (1995)

Short stories[link]

• "The Curio Shop" (1980)
• "Fragments of Papyrus from the Temple of the Older Gods" (1988)
• "Blues on the Nile: A Fragment of Papyrus" (1989)
• "Boxcar Blues" (1989)
• "Django Reinhardt Played the Blues" (1989)
• "Horse Badorties Goes Out" (1973)

Screenplays[link]

• A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) (original story, for the film)
• Book of Love (1990) (adapted from his novel Jack in the Box, for the film)

[edit] E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial series

• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) (with Melissa Mathison)
• E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet (1985)

Children's books[link]

• The World Is Big and I'm So Small (1986)

• Walter the Farting Dog series (with Glenn Murray)(illustrations by Audrey Colman)
  • Walter the Farting Dog (2001) ISBN 1-58394-053-7
  • Walter the Farting Dog: Trouble at the Yard Sale (2004) ISBN 0-525-47217-7 (this book has also been released as Walter the Farting Dog Farts Again)
  • Rough Weather Ahead for Walter the Farting Dog (2005) ISBN 0-525-47218-5
  • Walter the Farting Dog goes on a Cruise (2006) ISBN 0-525-47714-4
  • Walter The Farting Dog: Banned From the Beach (June 21, 2007) ISBN 0-525-47812-4 (co-written with Elizabeth Gundy)
  • Walter, Canis Inflatus (2004) ISBN 1-58394-110-X

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Eccentric Individuality in William Kotzwinkle's "The Fan Man", "E.T.", "Doctor Rat" and Other Works of Fiction and Fantasy, Leon Lewis (2002)
• biography
• Interview with Kotzwinkle
• William Kotzwinkle at the Internet Movie Database
• William Kotzwinkle at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Charles Dudley Warner, circa 1897

Charles Dudley Warner from Who-When-What Book, 1900

Charles Dudley Warner (September 12, 1829 – October 20, 1900) was an American essayist, novelist, and friend of Mark Twain, with whom he co-authored the novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.

Biography[link]

Warner was born of Puritan descent in Plainfield, Massachusetts. From the ages of six to fourteen he lived in Charlemont, Massachusetts, the scene of the experiences pictured in his study of childhood, Being a Boy (1877). He then moved to Cazenovia, New York, and in 1851 graduated from Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. ^[1]

He worked with a surveying party in Missouri; studied law at the University of Pennsylvania; practiced in Chicago (1856–1860); was assistant editor (1860) and editor (1861–1867) of The Hartford Press, and after The Press was merged into The Hartford Courant, was co-editor with Joseph R Hawley; in 1884 he joined the editorial staff of Harper's Magazine, for which he conducted The Editors Drawer until 1892, when he took charge of The Editor's Study. ^[1] He died in Hartford on October 20, 1900, and was interred at Cedar Hill Cemetery, with Mark Twain as a pall bearer and Joseph Twichell officiating.^[2]

Warner travelled widely, lectured frequently, and was actively interested in prison reform, city park supervision, and other movements for the public good. He was the first president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and, at the time of his death, was president of the American Social Science Association. He first attracted attention by the reflective sketches entitled My Summer in a Garden (1870; first published in The Hartford Courant), popular for their abounding and refined humour and mellow personal charm, their wholesome love of outdoor things, their suggestive comment on life and affairs, and their delicately finished style, qualities that suggest the work of Washington Irving. Charles Dudley Warner is known for making the famous remark,

Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. ^[3]

This was quoted by Mark Twain in a lecture, and is still commonly misattributed to Twain.^[4]

Selected list of works[link]

• Saunterings (descriptions of travel in eastern Europe, 1872)
• BackLog Studies (1872)
• Baddeck, And That Sort of Thing (1874), travels in Nova Scotia and elsewhere
• My Winter on the Nile (1876)
• In the Levant (1876)
• In the Wilderness (1878)
• A Roundabout Journey, in Europe (1883)
• On Horseback, in the Southern States (1888)
• Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada (1889)
• Our Italy, southern California (1891)
• The Relation of Literature to Life (1896)
• The People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote (1897)
• Fashions in Literature (1902)

He also edited The American Men of Letters series, to which he contributed an excellent biography of Washington Irving (1881), and edited a large Library of the World's Best Literature.

Essays

• As We Were Saying (1891)
• As We Go (1893)

Novels

• The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (in collaboration with Mark Twain, 1873)
• Their Pilgrimage (1886)
• A Little Journey in the World (1889)
• The Golden House (1894)
• That Fortune (1889).

Other publications[link]

• Annie A. Fields, Charles Dudley Warner (Garden City, New York, 1904)
• passim, A. B. Paine, Mark Twain (three volumes, New York, 1912)
• Brander Matthews, Aspects of Fiction (new edition, New York, 1902)
• Nook Farm: Mark Twain's Hartford Circle, by Kenneth R. Andrews. 288 pgs. Harvard UP, 1950. Has a lot on Warner, including a complete bib of his works.
• Biographical Sketch of Warner by T. R. Lounsbury, in the 15th volume of the 15-volume Collected Writings of Warner; Hartford, Conn: American Publishing Co., 1904. http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/3/1/1/3117/3117.htm

References[link]

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Warner, Charles Dudley". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Charles Dudley Warner

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Charles Dudley Warner

• Charles Dudley Warner page with links to his works available on the web.
• CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER by Mrs. James T. Fields. New York: McClure, Phillips, & Co., 1904. Contemporary Men of Letters Series.
• Works by Charles Dudley Warner at Project Gutenberg

Nicholas Sparks
Born	Nicholas Charles Sparks (1965-12-31) December 31, 1965 (age 46) Omaha, Nebraska, United States
Occupation	Novelist, screenwriter
Genres	Romantic fiction
www.nicholassparks.com

Nicholas Charles Sparks (born December 31, 1965) is an internationally bestselling American novelist and screenwriter. He has 16 published novels, with elements including cancer, death, pirates, and love. Seven have been adapted to film, including Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, The Last Song, and most recently The Lucky One.

Early life[link]

Nicholas Sparks was born on December 31, 1965, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Patrick Michael Sparks, a professor, and Jill Emma Marie (née Thoene) Sparks, a homemaker and an optometrist's assistant. He was the middle of three children, with an older brother Michael Earl "Micah" Sparks (1964–) and a younger sister, Danielle "Dana" Sparks (1966–2000), who died at the age of 33. Sparks has said that she is the inspiration for the main character in his novel A Walk to Remember.

Sparks was raised Roman Catholic^[1] and is of German, Czech, English and Irish ancestry.^[2] He and his wife are devout Catholics, and are raising their children in the Catholic faith. "I was raised Catholic, baptized, confirmed, Sunday School, went to Notre Dame, go to confession, go to church weekly," the author says. "My oldest son is an altar boy. All my children go to the Catholic school. My wife Catherine was raised Catholic. We were married in the Catholic Church. God is the most important thing in our lives. I suppose that's true of everybody's lives, whether or not they want to believe it."^[3]

His father was pursuing graduate studies, and the family moved a great deal, so by the time Sparks was 8, he had lived in Watertown, Minnesota, Los Angeles, and Grand Island, Nebraska. In 1974 his family settled in Fair Oaks, California, and remained there through Nicholas's high school days. He graduated in 1984 as valedictorian from Bella Vista High School, then enrolling at the University of Notre Dame, having received a full track and field scholarship. In his freshman year, his team set a record for the 4 x 800 relay.^{[citation needed]} Sparks majored in business finance and graduated with honors in 1988. He also met his future wife that year, Cathy Cote from New Hampshire, while they were both on spring break. They married on July 22, 1989 and moved to New Bern, NC. ^[4]

Writing career[link]

While still in school in 1985, Sparks had penned his first (never published) novel, The Passing, while home for the summer between freshman and sophomore years at Notre Dame. He wrote another novel in 1989, also unpublished, The Royal Murders.

After college, Sparks sought work with publishers or to attend law school, but was rejected in both attempts. He then spent the next three years trying other careers, including real estate appraisal, waiting tables, selling dental products by phone and starting his own manufacturing business.^[5]

In 1990, Sparks co-wrote with Billy Mills Wokini: A Lakota Journey to Happiness and Self-Understanding.^[6] The book was published by Feather Publishing, Random House, and Hay House. Sales for this book approximated 50,000 copies in its first year after release.^[7]

In 1992, Sparks began selling pharmaceuticals and in 1993 was transferred to Greenville, SC. It was there that he wrote another novel in his spare time, The Notebook.^[8] Two years later, he was discovered by literary agent Theresa Park, who picked The Notebook out of her agency's slush pile, liked it, and offered to represent him. In October 1995, Park secured a $1 million advance for The Notebook from Time Warner Book Group. The novel was published in October 1996 and made the New York Times best-seller list in its first week of release.

With the success of his first novel, he moved to New Bern, NC. After his first publishing success, he wrote several international bestsellers. Six of his novels have been made into films: Message in a Bottle (1999), A Walk to Remember (2002), The Notebook (2004), Nights in Rodanthe (2008), Dear John (2010), and The Last Song (2010). A seventh, The Lucky One, starring Zac Efron, was released in 2012.

According to his website, he has also sold the screenplay adaptations of True Believer and At First Sight, though it is uncertain whether either film will be made.^[9] His latest screenplay turned novel, The Last Song, has been turned into a film produced by Offspring Entertainment for Touchstone Pictures featuring Miley Cyrus.

Sparks began his 16th novel, Safe Haven, on February 17, 2010, and it was published on September 14, 2010. Film producers asked Sparks on August 4 for rights to release a movie adaptation of this new novel and the deal was closed the next day.^[10]

On June 17, 2011 Nicholas Sparks stated on his official website that Warner Bros. had bought the movie rights to his new book The Best of Me, which is coming out October 11, 2011. The production date for the movie has not been verified, although Sparks believes that filming of the movie will start in 2012.^[11]

On August 2, 2011, Sparks stated via his Twitter page that Safe Haven should begin production some time in October 2011.

Personal life and philanthropy[link]

Sparks resides in North Carolina^[12] with his wife, Cathy; their three sons, Miles, Ryan, and Landon; and twin daughters, Lexie and Savannah. Sparks has donated a track to New Bern High School and contributes to local and national charities. He contributes to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame by funding scholarships, internships and annual fellowships. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly reported that Sparks and his wife had donated "close to $10 million" to start a Christian, international, college-prep private school, The Epiphany School, which emphasizes travel and life-long learning.^[13][14]

Published works[link]

• The Notebook (October 1996)
• Message in a Bottle (April 1998)
• A Walk to Remember (October 1999)
• The Rescue (September 2000)
• A Bend in the Road (September 2001)
• Nights in Rodanthe (September 2002)
• The Guardian (April 2003)
• The Wedding (September 2003)
• Three Weeks With My Brother (April 2004) - A non-fiction account of traveling with his brother after the men lost both parents and their sister in quick succession.
• True Believer (April 2005)
• At First Sight (novel) (October 2005)
• Dear John (October 2006)
• The Choice (September 2007)
• The Lucky One (October 2008)
• The Last Song (September 2009)
• Safe Haven (September 2010)
• The Best Of Me (October 2011)

Film adaptations[link]

• Message in a Bottle (February 12, 1999)
• A Walk to Remember (January 25, 2002)
• The Notebook (June 25, 2004)
• Nights in Rodanthe (September 26, 2008)
• Dear John (February 5, 2010)
• The Last Song (March 31, 2010)
• The Lucky One (April 20, 2012)
• Safe Haven (film) Set to be released in 2013 Production has not yet started; Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough have been cast.
• The Best of Me (film) Warner Brothers bought copyright July 17, 2011^{[citation needed]}

Television[link]

The Watchers is a television supernatural drama which will be run on ABC. The show is based on a concept by Sparks, and will be co-written by Kristin Hahn who co-produced the film adaptation of The Time Traveler's Wife;^[15] the show will be produced by Twilight producer Temple Hill.^[16]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Nicholas Sparks at the Internet Movie Database

Nelle Harper Lee
President George W. Bush presents Harper Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House on November 5, 2007
Born	(1926-04-28) April 28, 1926 (age 86) Monroeville, Alabama
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	American
Subjects	Literature
Literary movement	Southern Gothic
Influences Truman Capote, William Faulkner
Influenced David Watterson
Signature

Nelle Harper E. Lee (born April 28, 1926) is an American author known for her 1960 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which deals with the issues of racism that were observed by the author as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Despite being Lee's only published book, it led to her being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom of the United States for her contribution to literature in 2007.^[1] Lee has also been the recipient of numerous honorary degrees but has always declined to make a speech.

Other significant contributions of Lee include assisting her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Nelle Harper Lee, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee, was born and raised in Monroeville, Alabama. Her mother's maiden name was Finch.^[3] Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who served in the Alabama State Legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy, a precocious reader, and best friends with her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote.

[edit] To Kill a Mockingbird

While enrolled at Monroe County High School, Lee developed an interest in English literature. After graduating in 1944,^[3] she went to the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery. Lee stood apart from the other students—she could not have cared less about fashion, makeup, or dating. Instead, she focused on her studies and on her writing. Lee was a member of the literary honor society and the glee club.

Transferring to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Lee was known for being a loner and an individualist. She did make a greater attempt at a social life there, joining a sorority for a while. Pursuing her interest in writing, Lee contributed to the school’s newspaper and its humor magazine, the Rammer Jammer. She eventually became the editor of the Rammer Jammer.^[5][6]

In her junior year, Lee was accepted into the university’s law school, which allowed students to work on law degrees while still undergraduates. The demands of her law studies forced her to leave her post as editor of the Rammer Jammer. After her first year in the law program, Lee began expressing to her family that writing—not the law—was her true calling. She went to Oxford University in England that summer as an exchange student. Returning to her law studies that fall, Lee dropped out after the first semester. She soon moved to New York City to pursue her hopes to become a writer.

In 1949, a 23-year-old Lee arrived in New York City. She struggled for several years, working as a ticket agent for Eastern Airlines and for the British Overseas Air Corp (BOAC). While in the city, Lee was reunited with old friend Truman Capote, one of the literary rising stars of the time. She also befriended Broadway composer and lyricist Michael Brown and his wife, Joy. Having written several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. The following month at the Browns' East 50th townhouse, she received a gift of a year's wages from them with a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."^[7] She quit her job and devoted herself to her craft. Within a year, she had a first draft. Working with J. B. Lippincott & Co. editor Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959. Published July 11, 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate bestseller and won great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains a bestseller with more than 30 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a poll by the Library Journal.

Details[link]

Many details of To Kill a Mockingbird are apparently autobiographical. Like Lee, the tomboy (Scout) is the daughter of a respected small-town Alabama attorney. The plot involves a legal case, the workings of which would have been familiar to Lee, who studied law. Scout's friend Dill was inspired by Lee's childhood friend and neighbor, Truman Capote,^[8] while Lee is the model for a character in Capote's first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.

Harper Lee has downplayed autobiographical parallels. Yet Truman Capote, mentioning the character Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, described details he considered biographical: "In my original version of Other Voices, Other Rooms I had that same man living in the house that used to leave things in the trees, and then I took that out. He was a real man, and he lived just down the road from us. We used to go and get those things out of the trees. Everything she wrote about it is absolutely true. But you see, I take the same thing and transfer it into some Gothic dream, done in an entirely different way."^[9]

[edit] After To Kill a Mockingbird

After completing To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee accompanied Capote to Holcomb, Kansas, to assist him in researching what they thought would be an article on a small town's response to the murder of a farmer and his family. Capote expanded the material into his best-selling book, In Cold Blood (1966).

Since publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee has granted almost no requests for interviews or public appearances and, with the exception of a few short essays, has published no further writings. She did work on a second novel—The Long Goodbye—eventually filing it away unfinished.^[10] During the mid-1980s, she began a factual book about an Alabama serial murderer but also put it aside when she was not satisfied.^[10] Her withdrawal from public life prompted unfounded speculation that new publications were in the works. Similar speculation followed the American writers J. D. Salinger and Ralph Ellison.

Lee said of the 1962 Academy Award-winning screenplay adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird by Horton Foote: "I think it is one of the best translations of a book to film ever made".^[11] She also became a friend of Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, the father of the novel's narrator, Scout. She remains close to the actor's family. Peck's grandson, Harper Peck Voll, is named after her.

In June 1966, Lee was one of two persons named by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the National Council on the Arts.

Lee showed her feistiness in her 1966 letter to the editor in response to the attempts of a Richmond, Virginia area school board to ban To Kill a Mockingbird as "immoral literature":

James J. Kilpatrick, then editor of The Richmond News Leader, started the Beadle Bumble fund to pay fines for victims of what he termed "despots on the bench". He built the fund using contributions from readers and later used the Beadle Bumble Fund to defend books as well as people. After a school board in suburban Richmond ordered school libraries to dispose of all copies of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, because the board found the book immoral, Kilpatrick wrote, "A more moral novel scarcely could be imagined". In the name of the Beadle, he then offered free copies to children who wrote in and by the end of the first week, he had given away 81 copies.^[12]

When Lee attended the 1983 Alabama History and Heritage Festival in Eufaula, Alabama, she presented the essay "Romance and High Adventure."

Lee has been known to split time between an apartment in New York and her sister's home in Monroeville. She has accepted honorary degrees but has declined to make speeches. In March 2005, she arrived in Philadelphia—her first trip to the city since signing with publisher Lippincott in 1960—to receive the inaugural ATTY Award for positive depictions of attorneys in the arts from the Spector Gadon & Rosen Foundation. At the urging of Peck's widow Veronique, Lee traveled by train from Monroeville to Los Angeles in 2005 to accept the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award. She has also attended luncheons for students who have written essays based on her work, held annually at the University of Alabama.^[13][14] On May 21, 2006, she accepted an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame. To honor her, the graduating seniors were given copies of Mockingbird before the ceremony and held them up when she received her degree.

On May 7, 2006, Lee wrote a letter to Oprah Winfrey (published in O, The Oprah Magazine in July 2006). Lee wrote about her love of books as a child and her dedication to the written word: "Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."^[15]

While attending an August 20, 2007 ceremony inducting four members into the Alabama Academy of Honor, Lee responded to an invitation to address the audience with "Well, it's better to be silent than to be a fool."^[16]

In a 2011 interview with the Daily Telegraph, Lee's close friend Rev. Dr. Thomas Lane Butts said that Lee is in an assisted-living facility, wheelchair bound, partially blind and deaf, and suffering from memory loss. Butts also said that Lee told him why she never wrote again: "Two reasons: one, I wouldn't go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill A Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again." ^[17]

Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient[link]

On November 5, 2007, Lee was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush at a White House ceremony. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award in the United States and recognizes individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."^[18][19]

Fictional portrayals[link]

Harper Lee was portrayed by Catherine Keener in the film Capote (2005), by Sandra Bullock in the film Infamous (2006), and by Tracey Hoyt in the TV movie Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story (1998). In the adaptation of Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms (1995), the character of Idabel Thompkins, who was inspired by Truman Capote's memories of Harper Lee as a child, was played by Aubrey Dollar.

Writings[link]

• To Kill a Mockingbird. (1960) New York: J. B. Lippincott.
• "Love—In Other Words". (April 15, 1961) Vogue, pp. 64–65
• "Christmas to Me". (December 1961) McCall's
• "When Children Discover America". (August 1965) McCall's
• "Romance and High Adventure" (1983), a paper presented in Eufaula, Alabama and collected in 1985 in the anthology Clearings in the Thicket.
• Open letter to Oprah Winfrey (July 2006), O: The Oprah Magazine

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Harper Lee

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Harper Lee

• Harper Lee at the Internet Book List
• Harper Lee at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Harper Lee in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Harper Lee collected news and commentary at The Guardian