TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - HARPER LEE WRITES RARE ITEM

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD author HARPER LEE has published a rare piece for OPRAH WINFREY's magazine. Lee recently penned a letter for O, The Oprah Magazine, on how she became a reader as a child in a rural, Depression-era Alabama town. The 80-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner stopped giving interviews 40 years ago and, other than a 1983 review of an Alabama history book, hasn't published anything significant since. In the letter for the magazine's July "special summer reading issue", Lee tells of becoming a reader when she was five-years-old. She writes about the scarcity of books in 1930s Monroeville, where she grew up, which made them especially treasured possessions. She writes, "Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books." The reclusive author was portrayed by CATHERINE KEENER in CAPOTE and will also be played by SANDRA BULLOCK in the upcoming film INFAMOUS.