Nelle Harper Lee (born April 28, 1926) is an American novelist widely known for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.