The University of Alabama School of Law and The ABA Journal are requesting entries for the first annual Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. The prize will be awarded annually to a published book-length work of fiction that best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society, and their power to effect change. It honors Lee, a former law student at Alabama, and To Kill a Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch.
Judges will be novelists Linda Fairstein and David Baldacci, journalist Jeffrey Toobin of CNN and The New Yorker, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and former American Bar Association president Robert J. Grey, Jr. The public will be invited to vote for their favorite among the finalists on the ABA Journal website.
The Harper Lee Prize will be presented to the winner in conjunction with the Library of Congress 2011 National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. Books first published in 2010 are eligible. The deadline for nominations is April 8, 2011, and there is no entry fee.
More information is available at www.HarperLeePrize.org.