Lynn Neary

The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict is the earliest known prison memoir by an African-American writer. Written by Austin Reed in the 1850s, it was discovered at an estate sale in 2009.

The author, who died Friday at 89, lived for decades in the shadow of her iconic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Yet there was more to Lee than her characters, however beloved they may remain.

Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel that was published in 1960 and didn't publish another book for more than 50 years afterward. She avoided the spotlight her entire life. She was 89.

How will Aaron Sorkin's rapid-fire dialogue fit with Harper Lee's tale of racism and justice in the South?

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of beloved blockbusters like The Winds of War is celebrating his milestone with a new memoir, Sailor and Fiddler, that sums up his thoughts on what it means to write.

Matt de la Pena's Last Stop on Market Street won the Newbery Medal for the best children's book of 2015. Finding Winnie, the story behind A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh, has won the Cal...

The most prestigious prizes in American children's books were given out this morning: the John Newbery Medal for literature and the Randolph Caldecott Medal for illustration.

Matt de la Peña becomes the first Hispanic author to win the Newbery, for his book Last Stop on Market Street, illustrated by Christian ...

The Authors Guild has started the new year with a bang. First, the group, which represents the interests of writers, asked the Supreme Court to review an October appeals court ruling, which upheld Google's right to digitize out-of-print books without an author's permission. A few days later, the guild ...

Earlier this year it became clear that Harper Lee had extensively revised To Kill a Mockingbird on the advice of her editor. That made us wonder: How much do editors shape the books we read?

James Patterson has donated hundreds of thousands of books and millions of dollars to promote reading. In partnership with Scholastic, this year he is giving nearly $2 million to school libraries.

Thousands of Cuban migrants are stuck at the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border. Nicaragua, a close ally of Cuba, won't let the migrants enter into its country to continue north to the United States.

President Obama will address the nation Sunday night on the threat of terrorism in the wake of the attacks in California and Paris. It will be a rare prime-time speech from the Oval Office.

The winners announced Wednesday night included Adam Johnson in fiction, Ta-Nehisi Coates in nonfiction, Robin Coste Lewis in poetry and Neal Shusterman in young people's literature.

Books by three YouTube stars are on The New York Times best-seller list right now. That's not an anomaly — NPR's Lynn Neary reports it's a trend that more and more publishers are starting to embrace.

Amazon is opening its first permanent brick and mortar bookstore in Seattle. The company often tries out new products and ideas in its hometown, and if this does well, it could be a harbinger of things to come.

Irving's latest novel is Avenue of Mysteries. He tells NPR's Lynn Neary that he thinks about each book for a long time — and he doesn't start writing until he knows what the ending will be.

The Nobel Prize laureate has written about his city before, but from the perspective of his affluent childhood. His new book captures Istanbul's growth and change through the eyes of a street peddler.

It's safe to say that e-books disrupted the publishing industry. But sales have leveled off and not entirely for the reasons some have reported.

Journalist Svetlana Alexievich is known for her in-depth exposes of the former Soviet Union, letting eyewitness accounts shed an unsettling light on tragedies such as Chernobyl nuclear meltdown.

The Nobel Prize for literature is revealed Thursday. While it would be nice to win, most writers realize they don't stand a chance. (This piece initially aired Oct. 10, 2013 on Morning Edition.)