As part of the Wood River Reads programming series, a lecture by Charles Shields, biographer of Harper Lee.
Since the publication of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee (Holt 2006), Mr. Shields has spoken to thousands of readers across the country and abroad. His biography of Ms. Lee, the first ever published, became a New York Times bestseller and was a Literary Guild Selection, and a Book-of-the-Month Club Alternate. His young adult biography of Harper Lee, I Am Scout (Owl 2008) was chosen an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year, and a Junior Literary Guild Selection.
After the release of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, people knowledgeable about Ms. Lee as a beginning writer contacted him with new information not available to him when was researching the biography. The release of Go Set a Watchman in July 2015 and the subsequent media flurry generated even more details to the story of the author of one of the 20th century’s most popular books. Mr. Shields’ revision of his 2006 work, including this new chapter in Harper Lee’s life, will be available in 2016.
In 2011, Shields published And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life (Holt), a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year.
Currently, he’s completing the first biography of John Williams, author of Stoner and the National Book Award-winning, Augustus, which will be published by Lebowski Publisher in the Netherlands.
