Laura Hillenbrand is the recipient of the Invisible Disabilities Association’s 2013 Perseverance Honors Award. The Awards Night will take place on October 24th in Denver, Colorado.

Hillenbrand is the author of the critically acclaimed Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001), a non-fiction account of the great racehorse, which spent 42 weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, in hardcover and paperback. Seabiscuit won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for non-fiction in 2001.  The book inspired the movie Seabiscuit which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Hillenbrand’s second book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010), a biography of Olympic runner and World II hero Louis Zamperini, has spent 129 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, 14 of them at #1.

Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Equus magazine, American Heritage, The Blood-Horse, Thoroughbred Times,The Backstretch, Turf and Sport Digest, and many other publications. Her 1998 American Heritage article on the horse Seabiscuit won the Eclipse Award for Magazine Writing.

Hillenbrand is a co-founder, with Gary Sinese, of Operation International Children