Lucky (memoir)

In the early hours of May 8, 1981, while Sebold was eighteen years old and a freshman at Syracuse University, she was assaulted and raped while walking home through a tunnel to an amphitheater near campus. She notified police, who were initially unable to find the man she had encountered. After an officer suggested the man might have been Anthony Broadwater, who had reportedly been seen in the area, police arrested and charged Broadwater. Broadwater ultimately served 16 years in prison, maintaining his innocence throughout. Because he would not admit to the attack, he was denied parole five times. ==Writing of Lucky==

Sebold began writing Lucky after taking a memoir class with Geoffrey Wolff at the University of California, Irvine, where she completed her MFA in 1998. She published the book in 1999, about a year after Broadwater's release. ==Film adaptation and exoneration==

In 2019, a film adaption of the memoir was announced with director Karen Moncrieff. Victoria Pedretti was later selected to star as Sebold. The conviction had relied heavily on Sebold's testimony, as well as on microscopic hair analysis, a forensic technique the United States Department of Justice later found to be unreliable. The film adaptation of Lucky was canceled after losing its funding in mid-2021. ==References==