Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, a tiny town about halfway between Montgomery and Mobile. She was the youngest of five children. As a child Harper was a tomboy and bestfreinds with Truman Capote. Harper was an avid reader. In High school Harper took and interest in English literature. She went to an all girl college (Huntington college in Montgomery) she was considered a loner. she transferred schools now going to University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. After she became a editor for the Rammer Jammer. after transferring once a again to study law Harper soon realized her true passion was writing. she packed up and moved to New York to pursue writing. Once in New York she wrote short stories. But in 1956 she started writing To Kill A Mockingbird it took her three and a half years but To Kill A Mockingbird got published in 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. After To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee joined her friend Truman Capote 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. Harper Lee is now 86.