Otto Penzler, editor and founder of the mystery and crime house Penzler Publishing, is teaming with Pegasus Books to launch Scarlet, a joint publishing venture specializing in psychological suspense aimed at female readers. Scarlet has tabbed Luisa Smith (longtime buying director at Book Passage bookstore), to be Scarlet editor-in-chief for the imprint which will launch in winter 2020 with six to eight titles to be distributed by W.W. Norton. Penzler added that "Psychological suspense that features complex women is one of the most dynamic categories in popular fiction right now, so the time is right for an imprint dedicated to this genre."
The annual Super Bowl is coming up this Sunday, and Janet Rudolph has compiled a listing of crime fiction themed around the Super Bowl and American-style football.
On February 5 in the UK, there will be a Killer Women Panel on "The Unstoppable Appeal of Crime Fiction - What is it about crime that makes so many people choose to read and watch it?" A panel of authors including Alison Joseph, Mel McGrath, Kate Rhodes, and Laura Wilson, will discuss the huge, unstoppable appeal of crime fiction and the role that jeopardy so often plays in good storytelling.
The 2019 Eudora Welty Conference, hosted by the College of Charleston on February 21–23, will include the February 22 panel "Welty and Mystery," with presentations on "Eudora Welty's Career in Mystery Fiction"; "Chester Himes, Harper Lee, Eudora Welty: The Civil Rights Movement on a Crime Fiction Continuum"; "Murder, Mystery, and Motivation: Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter and Agatha Christie’s The Body in the Library"; "Wanted Dead Or Alive: Last Years’ Dead Branches"; and "The Writer as Detective Hero”: Eudora Welty and Her Late Fiction." (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell at The Bunburyist)
The 2019 St. Hilda's College Crime Fiction Weekend, to be held August 16-18, has announced the featured guests including Natasha Cooper as Chair and Denise Mina as Guest of Honor. The theme of the conference this year is "Gamechangers: writers who have transformed the genre," and will feature a host of presenters including Sarah Hilary, Val McDermid, Nicci French, Mick Herron, and more.There will also be a PD James Conference Dinner, with proceeds benefiting the PD James Fund to support the work of the English School and students at St Hilda’s College.
The Minnesota Book Award finalists were announced, including titles in the Genre Fiction category. Those nods include crime novels Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia; The Shadows We Hide by Allen Eskens; and The Voice Inside by Brian Freeman.
The UK's New Readings announced a call for submissions on the topic of "Fictions of Organized Crime" and invites articles of between 7,000 and 10,000 words on the cultural representation of organized crime across a range of art forms (including, but not limited to, film, TV, literature, comics/graphic novels, popular music).
The Guardian reported on the death of Diana Athill, writer and editor, at the age of 101. During her fifty years in publishing, Athill helped found the publishing companies Allan Wingate and André Deutsch, where she worked closely with many Deutsch authors, including Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Mordecai Richler, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Rhys, Gitta Sereny, Brian Moore, V. S. Naipaul, Molly Keane, Stevie Smith, Jack Kerouac, Charles Gidley Wheeler, Margaret Atwood, and David Gurr. She also won acclaim for her own stories, novels, and memoirs.
HarperCollins has pledged £20,000 in grants for independent bookstores as part of its ongoing commitment to The Literacy Project. The grants will fund up to 10 Literacy Project initiatives around the UK and Ireland, devised and led locally by independent bookshops,
The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Orange Julius" by Jim George.
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