FAIRHOPE, Ala. — The Alabama Writers’ Forum invites the public to enjoy An Evening with Harper Lee Award-winner Rick Bragg on June 21, from 7-9 p.m., at Centennial Hall on the Faulkner State Community College campus in Fairhope. Books will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of Page and Palette bookstore. Tickets for the event are $10.

One of Alabama’s most beloved storytellers and richly decorated writers, Bragg will entertain the audience by reading from his work and telling the stories for which he is so well known.

"We live in a state with one of the richest literary traditions in the country,” said Bragg. “Good writers seem to grow from the very dirt here, but often for them to succeed, for their beautiful words to be heard, there has to be an apparatus that aids them, encourages them, gives them a platform or at the very least shines a light on their work.

“We need to gather, we need to encourage each other and the generations that will come after us. I don’t know what kind of legacy I will leave when my writing life is over, but I know it will be made richer by the people who have supported and encouraged me in my own state.

“So, we have to support and encourage those mechanisms that support us. In our state, the Alabama Writers’ Forum is such a mechanism.”

The Alabama Writers’ Forum is a statewide literary arts service organization serving writers, readers, publishers and those in the literary arts community since 1993. Headquartered in Montgomery, the Forum is a partnership program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

Emphasizing the role of creative writing for Alabama’s youth, the Forum recognizes the top young writers statewide each year through the High School Literary Arts Awards. The Forum also directs Writing Our Stories, a creative writing program for juvenile offenders in conjunction with the Alabama Department of Youth Services.

Forum executive director Jeanie Thompson said all proceeds from the tickets sales and other corporate donations will help support the programs of the Alabama Writers’ Forum.

“During this time of fiscal challenges for arts funding everywhere, it is encouraging that an award-winning Alabama author will step up and gather the tribe for a benefit evening,” Thompson said. “Rick’s generosity, especially when he and his family have suffered in Tuscaloosa from the recent tornado damage, warms my heart.”

The event will include a silent auction for several book collections by other Harper Lee Award-winners from the inception of the award in 1997. These include books by 14 annual winners, including the inaugural recipient, Mobile native Albert Murray, and the 2011 winner, Winston Groom of Point Clear.

Co-sponsors of the event include Page and Palette Bookstore, the Pensters Writing Group and the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts.

Tickets are available at Page & Palette in Fairhope, online at www.writersforum.org or through the Forum’s office, 334-265-7728, toll free at 866-901-1117, or writersforum@bellsouth.net.

A limited amount of tickets are available.