The Confession Named Inaugural Winner of New Legal Literary Award
For his work in The Confession, #1 best-selling author John Grisham is being awarded the 2011 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, a new literary award co-sponsored by The University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal, the flagship magazine of the American Bar Association.
United States Attorney General Eric Holder helped initiate this award at a ceremony last September in Tuscaloosa, marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill A Mockingbird. Ms. Harper Lee, who attended The University of Alabama School of Law, approved of this award.
The Harper Lee Prize will be given annually to a published work of fiction that best exemplifies the positive role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change.
The Confession was declared the 2011 winner by a distinguished Selection Committee, including David Baldacci, Linda Fairstein, Morris Dees and Robert J. Grey, Jr. In the Committee’s view, The Confession, which explores an attorney’s tireless efforts to save his client from being executed for a crime he did not commit, most-deservedly embodies the spirit of the Harper Lee Prize.
Grisham will be presented with the award during a special ceremony September 22, at 2 p.m., at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Following the award presentation, David Baldacci will lead a discussion of The Confession, in relationship to Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, including guest panelists Morris Dees, Linda Fairstein, Robert Grey, Laura Miller, and Thane Rosenbaum.