Leveritt to present at library tonight

Award-winning author Mara Leveritt will present at the Faulkner County Library at 7 p.m. today.

Leveritt is the author of the critically acclaimed "Boys on the Tracks" as well as "The Devil's Knot." This program will be great for anyone interested in the West Memphis Three Case, the criminal justice system in Arkansas, and/or fantastic non-fiction writing. The presentation will include a discussion with the author, book reading, digital presentation and book signing with the author. Books will be for sale at the event.

Leveritt works as a newspaper and Web reporter in Arkansas, focusing mostly on the criminal justice system. She has won numerous awards for investigative reporting, and in 1994 was named Arkansas Journalist of the Year. Her book, "The Boys on the Tracks", published in 1998, examines the still-unsolved murders of two Arkansas teenagers and the drug-related corruption that obscured the case. Kirkus called the book "a wrecking-ball tale of tragedy, malfeasance, and machine politics." It won Arkansas's Booker Worthen Prize.

In 2002, Simon and Schuster published "Devil's Knot", Leveritt's examination of the legal irregularities that followed the sensational murders of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. Acting on the deeply flawed confession of a minor, police arrested three local teenagers, now known as the West Memphis Three, and charged them with the crime. Prosecutors said the teens had killed the younger boys as part of an occult ritual. One of the three was sentenced to death, the two others to life in prison. Despite an absence of physical evidence linking any the three to the crime, the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed all three convictions. Leveritt considers the case as much a travesty and as important to American history as the Salem witch trials.

Library Journal "highly recommended" "Devil's Knot", which it called "an indictment of a culture and legal system." The Toronto Globe and Mail observed that, "In the best tradition of crime journalism," Leveritt exposed a case that "has become a Gordian knot for U.S. justice and the nation's sense of its freedoms." In 2003, Leveritt was awarded a second Booker Worthen Prize. Leveritt opposes the death penalty, in part due to her familiarity with faults in the legal system. In 1999, she was named Arkansas Abolitionist of the Year. While she is often labeled a true-crime writer, she stresses that, more than bloody ones, she is interested in crimes by public officials.

.story-ad {

width: 310px;

float: left;

margin: 0 10px 10px 0;

padding: 4px;

}

- Advertisement -

OAS_AD('x22');

The event is free and open to the public. Free refreshments will be served. For more information contact Sarah at the Faulkner County Library at 327-7482 or sarah@fcl.org