Alabama Writers Awards
The presentations of the Alabama Writers Awards is a highlight of the Monroeville Literary Festival. The recipient of the Harper Lee Award (named after the author of the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird) is chosen by a committee selected by the Festival leadership. The award is funded by the generous sponsorship of Harper Lee LLC. The Truman Capote Prize for Alabama's Distinguished Writer of Literary Non-Fiction or the Short Story is awarded by a selection committee chaired by Dr. Don Noble of Tuscaloosa. This award is made possible by the generous sponsorship of Ms. Dianne Lawson Baker.
The Harper Lee Award
For Alabama's Distinguished Writer
The Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer is awarded each year at the Monroeville Literary Festival, a project of the Monroe County Museum in Monroeville. The annual award recognizes the lifetime achievement of a writer who was born in Alabama or whose literary career developed in the state. The recipient is chosen by a committee selected by the Festival leadership.
2025 - Cassandra King
Cassandra King is the award-winning author of two books of non-fiction and five novels, Making Waves, The Sunday Wife, The Same Sweet Girls, Queen of Broken Hearts and Moonrise, as well as numerous short stories and articles. The Sunday Wife was a Book Sense Pick and a People Magazine Page Turner of the Week; on release, The Same Sweet Girls was the number one Book Sense selection nationwide. Queen of Broken Hearts, was a Book of the Month Club and Literary Guild selection. Her latest book, Tell Me a Story, was named SIBA’s non-fiction Book of the Year. A native of Alabama, Cassandra resides in Beaufort, S.C., where she is honorary chair of the Pat Conroy Literary Center.
“One of my most treasured possessions, literally under lock and key in my desk, is my signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird,” King said. “As someone who came of age in rural Alabama during the time of the book’s release, I don’t just love and appreciate To Kill a Mockingbird, I revere it. When Harper Lee told the story of Scout Finch, she was telling my story as well, and the stories of so many of us who grew up during that historic time.”
In expressing her gratitude for the award, King wished she had been able to speak to the late author herself to say, “Harper Lee, few writers have touched and influenced as many lives as you have. But please allow this Alabama girl to finally say thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Your writing not only touched and influenced me, you changed my vision of the world.”
King grew up on a peanut farm in the rural community of Pinckard, Ala. As a child, she wrote stories to read to her friends at recess. King attended Alabama College (now University of Montevallo) and graduated with a BA in English in 1967. In the late 1980s, King returned to the University of Montevallo, where she earned an MFA in 1988.
After the end of her first marriage, King taught English and writing classes for several years at Jefferson State and Gadsden State Community Colleges and at the University of Montevallo. In 1998, King married South Carolina writer Pat Conroy, whom she had met in 1995 at the Southern Voices literary conference in Hoover. After their marriage, King stopped teaching and began writing full-time. Her most recent book, Tell Me a Story, is a memoir of her life with Conroy.
2024
Tom Franklin
Tom Franklin is the New York Times bestselling author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger Award. His previous works include Poachers, Hell at the Breech and Smonk. He teaches in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.
Tom Franklin was born and raised in rural Dickinson, Ala. He held various jobs as a struggling writer living in South Alabama, including working as a heavy-equipment operator in a grit factory, a construction inspector in a chemical plant and a clerk in a hospital morgue. In 1997 he received his MFA from the University of Arkansas. His first book, Poachers was named as a Best First Book of Fiction by Esquire and Franklin received a 1999 Edgar Award for the title story.
"I'm so honored to win this award. I grew up about 45 minutes from Monroeville, in Dickinson, Ala., and first read To Kill a Mockingbird in my early twenties," Franklin says. "I couldn't believe she was from Monroeville. I love that book, and the movie of it, and I love coming to Monroeville whenever I can. This will be an especially exciting trip. I'm such a fan of the writers who've won this before. I'm so happy for this honor."
2023
Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022. Winner of the 2022 Academy of American Poets Leadership Award, she examines the power of words and how poetry summons us toward justice and healing.
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The author of nine books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed An American Sunrise, several plays and children’s books, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior, her many honors include the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, two NEA fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Past
Harper Lee Award Winners
1998 - Albert Murray
1999 - Madison Jones
2000 - Helen Norris
2001 - Sena Jeter Naslund
2002 - Mary Ward Brown
2003 - Rodney Jones
2004 - Sonia Sanchez
2005 - Andrew Hudgins
2006 - Wayne Greenhaw
2007 - William "Bill" Cobb
2008 - Rebecca Gilman
2009 - Rick Bragg
2010 - Carolyn Haines
2011 - Winston Groom
2012 - Fannie Flagg
2013 - Gay Talese
2014 - Mark Childress
2015 - Hank Lazer
2016 - E.O. Wilson
2017 - Brad Watson
2018 - Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
2019 - Daniel Wallace
2020 - Patti Callahan Henry
2021 - Angela Johnson
2022 – Cynthia Tucker
2023 – Joy Harjo
2024 – Tom Franklin
2022
Cynthia Tucker
Cynthia Tucker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist. Her weekly column, which appears in newspapers around the country, focuses on political and cultural issues, including income inequality, social justice and reform of the public education system.
Tucker has spent most of her career in newspapers, working as a reporter and editor. For seventeen years, she served as editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, overseeing the newspaper’s editorial policies on everything from local elections to foreign affairs. She also worked as a Washington-based political columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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Cynthia’s first published book, The Southernization of America: A Story of Democracy in the Balance (NewSouth Books, 2/15/2022), co-authored with Frye Gaillard, is a compelling series of linked essays considering the role of the South in shaping America’s current political and cultural landscape.
The Truman Capote Prize
For Distinguished Work in the
Short Story or Literary Non-Fiction
2025 - Suzanne Hudson
Suzanne Hudson is the 2025 winner of the Alabama Truman Capote Prize. Hudson is the author of two literary novels, In a Temple of Trees and In the Dark of the Moon. Her short fiction has been anthologized in almost a dozen books, including Stories from the Blue Moon Café and The Shoe Burnin': Stories of Southern Soul. Her short story collection Opposable Thumbs was a finalist for a John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her latest work of short stories, All the Way to Memphis, brings characters from the South to life in a way any reader will know and love. She lives with her husband, author Joe Formichella, near Fairhope, Alabama.​
2024 Winner
Kim Cross
Kim Cross is a New York Times best-selling author and journalist known for meticulously reported narrative nonfiction. A full-time freelance writer, she has bylines in the New York Times, Nieman Storyboard, Outside, Bicycling, Garden & Gun, CNN.com, ESPN.com and USA Today. Kim’s first book, What Stands in a Storm, chronicles the biggest tornado outbreak in history, the April 2011 storm that unleashed 349 tornadoes on 21 states, killing at least 324 people. The book won the Fitzgerald Museum Literary Prize for Excellence in Writing and the American Society of Journalists and Authors nonfiction book award.
Her current book is In Light of All Darkness, Inside the Polly Klaas Kidnapping and the Search for America’s Child. Paced like a thriller and full of insider information on the history and science of crime scene investigation, In Light of All Darkness embeds readers in one of the most famous true-crime stories of our generation – the kidnapping of Polly Klaas – a case as pivotal in the history of the FBI as the Unabomber or Oklahoma City bombing.
2023 Winner
Michael Martone
Michael Martone is a widely published writer of short fiction, known for his humor and skillful word play. Born in Fort Wayne, Ind., he is the author of nearly 30 books and chapbooks. He was a professor at the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, where he taught from 1996 until his retirement in 2020. He also taught at Iowa State University, Harvard University and Syracuse University.
Michael Martone’s fiction books include Plain Air; Art Smith; The Moon Over Wapakoneta; Winesburg, Indiana; Four For A Quarter; Double-wide; Michael Martone; The Blue Guide to Indiana; Seeing Eye; Pensées; Fort Wayne is Seventh on Hitler’s List; Safety Patrol and Alive and Dead in Indiana.
Martone has won two NEA Fellowships and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. His stories and essays have appeared and been cited in the Pushcart Prize, The Best American Stories and The Best American Essays anthologies.
His stories have won awards in the Italian Americana fiction contest, the Florida Review Short Story Contest, the Story magazine Short, Short Story Contest, the Margaret Jones Fiction Prize of Black Ice Magazine, and the first World’s Best Short, Short Story Contest.
2022 Winner
Rheta Grimley Johnson
Rheta Grimsley Johnson is an award-winning reporter, columnist, and travelogue and memoir writer whose subject matter includes seemingly average southern people whose stories she elevates to the universal. Johnson writes compassionately about the often overlooked and rapidly disappearing contemporary rural South.
Born in Colquitt, Georgia; she grew up in Montgomery. She attended Auburn University, where she won the National Pacemaker Award, an award for excellence in student journalism, in 1974, while editor of The Auburn Plainsman. She moved to Monroeville in 1975 to work at The Monroe Journal – a launching pad for a career at some of the South’s largest papers: the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, and Scripps Howard News Service.
One of the longest-running female syndicated columnists in the nation, Rheta Grimsley Johnson wrote a weekly essay for King Features Syndicate of New York that was distributed to about 50 newspapers nationwide. Her words are, in turn, fiery or poignant, touching on people, places and life predicaments, often on subjects not found elsewhere.
Past
Truman Capote
Prize Winners
Past
Truman Capote
Prize Winners
2016 - Marlin Barton
2017 - Michael Knight
2018 - Michelle Richmond
2019 - BJ Hollars
2020 - Charles Gaines
2021 - Allen Wier
2022 – Rheta Grimsley Johnson
2023 – Michael Martone
2024 – Kim Cross