NEW YORK

Famed American writer Harper Lee, acclaimed for her 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, has died. She was 89. 
Reports of Lee's death was confirmed by the mayor in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. 
The cause of her death was not immediately available but Lee had been residing in an assisted living facility in Monroeville since suffering a severe stroke in 2007.
The White House hailed Lee as a "a giant of American literature". 
"She had her own significant impact on our country and our culture, and on our country's perspective on some pretty sensitive topics," said spokesman Josh Earnest. 
The reclusive author rose to nationwide fame with her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which has been translated into 40 languages and sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. 

It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Set in a small Alabama town in the 1930s, the book was celebrated for its sensitive treatment of a child’s awakening to racism and prejudice in the American South.

"She had a way of telling stories that does have an influence and resonates with the worldview of so many Americans, even so many decades after that book was initially published," Earnest said.

A much anticipated sequel, Go Set A Watchman, was published as recently as July 2015, after its lost manuscript was discovered in late 2014.

Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.

A 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck as lawyer Finch, won three Academy Awards.