FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Semmes resident and University of South Alabama faculty member Carolyn Haines has been named the 2010 recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Year. Haines will receive the honor at the Alabama Writers Symposium in Monroeville. The conference will meet April 29-May 1.

“We are delighted with the selection of Carolyn Haines for the (award),” stated James A. Buford Jr., president of the Alabama Writers’ Forum board of directors. “On April 30, she will join 12 other distinguished writers whose contributions to the literary arts follow in the tradition of Harper Lee.”

Haines said, “I truly am so deeply honored.” Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” was one of the reasons Haines became a writer, and she recently completed an article for Longleaf magazine in which she detailed the personal impact the classic novel had on her destiny.

“It was the young girl protagonist, and a time and place I know so intimately,” she said, noting she was as impressed with Lee’s writing style as the story itself.

Haines was born in Lucedale, Miss. and spent much of her youth in southwest Alabama during the 1960s. She said because of that, she is very familiar with the struggle played out in Lee’s masterpiece.

This is the 13th Harper Lee Award bestowed upon a writer. Previous recipients include Rick Bragg (2009), Rebecca Gilman (2008), William Cobb (2007), Wayne Greenhaw (2006), Andrew Hudgins (2005), Sonia Sanchez (2004), Rodney Jones (2003), Mary Ward Brown (2002), Sena Jeter Naslund (2001), Helen Norris (2000), Madison Jones (1999) and Albert Murray (1998).

“Great congratulations to Carolyn Haines on being named the 2010 Harper Lee Award recipient, and on adding this wonderful award to her string of writing honors and accomplishments,” Bragg stated in a press release. “The award was one of the nicer moments of my writing life, and I hope it is that for her as well.”

Haines said, “It’s almost unbelievable I’ve been a writer for so long, and to be lifted to the level of these people is a stirring development in my life.”

Haines is the author of 10 books in the popular Sarah Booth Delaney (Bones) mystery series. Her latest, “Bone Appétit,” will be released in July by Minotaur Books.

She has received critical acclaim for the series as well as for her stand-alone titles.

“Fever Moon,” an historical thriller released in 2007, was a Book Sense notable book, and “Penumbra,” set in 1952 Mississippi, was named one of the top five mysteries of 2006 by Library Journal, a distinction also given to “Hallowed Bones” in 2004.

Her first nonfiction book, “My Mother’s Witness: The Peggy Morgan Story,” tells the story of a woman who testified against Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist who murdered civil rights worker Medgar Evers.

Haines and Rebecca Barrett edited a collection of memories about Mobile author Eugene Walter, titled “Moments with Eugene.” “Touched” and “Summer of the Redeemers,” two general fiction novels, have been reissued in trade paperback. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Haines writes around one book each year, and enjoys stepping outside the Bones series.

She said, “The best for me is to be under contract and be in xenia with those characters. It allows me to grow as a writer and explore other characters.” Asked if she ever considered working on more than one series simultaneously as some authors do, she said, “To do two series would not leave me any time to explore.”

Haines is currently dabbling in horror, a genre she has never before attempted.

“It’s not splatter type like ‘Saw,’” she said, “It’s the Shirley Jackson type, if I may be so bold.”

Haines is also very excited about the upcoming debut of a collection of short stories she edited.

“Delta Blues,” will be released by Tyrus Books on May 1. The book includes a foreword by Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman and short stories by some of the finest writers working today, including John Grisham, James Lee Burke and Charlaine Harris.

The stories focus on the Mississippi Delta blues, a unique musical form that originated in that region, and a crime or noir element. Haines said $1 from each book sold will go to the Rock River Foundation to help fight illiteracy and support the arts in the delta region.

The writers featured in “Delta Blues” will form a blues band and perform March 27 at the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Miss. The venue is partly owned by Freeman.

Haines will be on hand there, as well as at a reading on April 30 at the old Monroe County Courthouse, the real-life setting for the Lee’s fictional work.

“I was there last year for Rick Bragg’s (honor), and it’s such a special place,” she said. “Scout (Finch, a main character from “To Kill a Mockingbird”) is still there. I expect to see her each time I go in.”

The Lucedale courthouse was a block from Haines’ childhood home. Political candidates of the day often paid the town’s children to distribute campaign cards, but Haines would gather her brother and cousin and they would go upstairs in the courthouse, chew up the cards and make spit balls to target those below. She said, “We were bad little kids, but we had fun.”

Haines is indeed a product of the Deep South. She said, “There’s a love of family I’m sure other parts of the world enjoy, but I don't live there so I don’t know. I have an enormous connection to the land. In a rural setting, I learned how to make my own fun. I engaged my imagination.”

Haines also received a 2009 Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence and a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 1999.

She earned a bachelor of arts in journalism from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1974 and a master of arts in English from the University of South Alabama in 1985.

Haines teaches the graduate and undergraduate fiction writing classes at the University of South Alabama, where she is an assistant professor and fiction coordinator. An animal activist, she works to help educate the public about the need to spay and neuter pets.

The Alabama Writers’ Forum, a partnership program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts, coordinates the process to select the Harper Lee Award recipient annually from nominations from the field. The honor is presented annually by Alabama Southern Community College at the symposium. It is made possible through a grant from George F. Landegger.

The award is made to a living, nationally recognized Alabama writer who has made a significant, lifelong contribution to Alabama letters. It includes a cash prize and a bronze sculpture by Frank Fleming of the Monroe County Courthouse clock tower. The courthouse is a setting for “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

To find out more about the Alabama Writers’ Forum, call (334) 265-7728, or e-mail writersforum@bellsouth.net. They are also on the Web at www.writersforum.org.

Carolyn Haines’ Internet home is www.carolynhaines.com.