Arkansas Times contributing editor Mara Leveritt will receive the 2014 Porter Fund Literary Prize in October, the Porter Fund said in a statement Tuesday.
The $2,000 prize is given to an Arkansas writer who “has accomplished a substantial and impressive body of work that merits enhanced recognition,” according to the statement from Porter Fund board member Werner Trieschmann.
Leveritt is known for her three nonfiction books about crime and public corruption.
She is the author of The Boys on the Tracks, about murder and prosecutorial corruption in Arkansas; Devil’s Knot, about the trials of the teenagers known as the West Memphis Three; and Dark Spell, which addresses Jason Baldwin’s life post-conviction. Baldwin is one of three West Memphis teenagers arrested in connection with the 1993 killings of three children who was eventually released from prison after entering an Alford plea.
Leveritt is a contributing editor to the Arkansas Times and is a past Arkansas Journalist of the Year, Trieschmann said.
Donald Harington, Morris Arnold and Kevin Brockmeier are all past winners of the Porter Prize. Award recipients must have an Arkansas connection.
Leveritt will be honored at a free, public ceremony on Oct. 16 at the Central Arkansas Library System's Main Library’s Darragh Center Auditorium, 100 Rock St.