The Texas Book Festival tweeted this morning that the 2019 Texas Writer Award Winner is Attica Locke. Locke's latest novel, Heaven, My Home, is the sequel to the Edgar Award-winning Bluebird, Bluebird. Her third novel Pleasantville was the winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was also long-listed for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction. Locke will receive the award on Saturday, October 26, at the festival in Austin.
The Mystery Writers of America's Northern California chapter is sponsoring a weeklong celebration of crime and mystery fiction at various locations in California from October 19 through 26. The events kick off in San Francisco with a Noir at the Bar featuring Laurie R. King as emcee and authors David Corbett, Alan Jacobson, Claire Johnson, Eileen Rendahl, Kelli Stanley. All the events are free and open to the public.
This week saw the 170th anniversary of the death of Edgar Allan Poe and the arrival of the first International Edgar Allan Poe Festival and Awards, held in Baltimore. At the Saturday evening banquet, the award for Best Adaptations of E.A. Poe’s Life or Works went to The Raven, by Damien Draven; The Tale Telling Heart, by Nicholas Schleif and A Midnight Visit, by Broad Encounters Productions. The Best Original Works Inspired by E.A. Poe’s Life and Writing were Bury Me Like Poe, by Kandy S. Alameda; The Raven Nutcracker, by Tracy Dentico; and The Assassination Of Edgar Allan Poe, by Devon Armstrong and John Armstrong. Also celebrating the Poe milestone in Richmond, Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch put together a montage of Poe-related articles and photos from their archives, and Richmond's WWBT-TV looked into the enduring mystery behind the author's death. And now might also be a good time to pay a visit to the Edgar Allan Poe Museum.
On Saturday, November 9 at 5:00 p.m., the Flintridge Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Pasadena will host the panel ON THE RUN: Australian Crime Writers in America. Pasadena author Désirée Zamorano moderates this discussion with visiting authors Sulari Gentill (the Rowland Sinclair Mysteries); Robert Gott (historical crime novels); Jock Serong (Quota; Preservation), and Emma Viskic (Resurrection Bay). ON THE RUN is a group of four award-winning Australian crime writers, who recently received a grant by the Australia Council for the Arts to tour the United States.
The Beacon Society is sponsoring an essay contest for US and Canadian students in 4th to 12th grades that focuses on the Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League," "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches," and "The Greek Interpreter." There are cash prizes for first to third place, and the submission deadline is February 1, 2020. (HT to Elizabeth Foxwell at The Bunburyist)
The Fall 2019 issue of Suspense Magazine is out, featuring interviews of Doug Preston and Lincoln Child; Karin Slaughter; Iris Johansen; David Baldacci; Adrian McKinty; Chris Bauer; Karen Katchur, and Leslie Meier. Daryl Wood Gerber has a feature "On Writing" and Dennis Palumbo has had "Enough" and lets you know why. There are also dozen of pages of reviews, short stories and much more.
Hodder & Stoughton has commissioned a major new book about Agatha Christie from historian and biographer Lucy Worsley, promising a new perspective on the crime master. Worsley said she wanted to place Christie as a female author in the wider context of "a troubled 20th century." The historian has previously written a history of the detective fiction genre, A Very British Murder, and a biography of another successful female author, Jane Austen.
Sarah Weinman penned a profile for Crimereads of "How Mary Roberts Rinehart, Queen of the Mystery Novel, Was Very Nearly Murdered."
For you authors out there: over at the Killzone blog, John Gilstrap talked about using guns in crime fiction, while Sue Coletta wondered if writers (and others) can lose their fingerprints.
In the "truth is often stranger than fiction" department, the FBI is calling Samuel Little America's "most prolific serial killer," confessing to 93 murders, of which 50 have been verified.
This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Shut-Off" by Wayne R. Burke. And the 5-2 editor, Gerald So, also made note of 5-2 "best" poems of the year that will be submitted to Sundress Publications' Best of the Net anthology.
In the Q&A roundup, the Daily journal spoke with J.A. Jance about her early setbacks and later successes; New Zealand's Stuff Magazine chatted with author Adrian McKinty on going from being an Uber driver to selling a crime novel to Hollywood; Star2 interviewed John Connolly about his Charlie Parker series and the settings involved in the latest installment, A Book of Bones; Canberra journalist and author, Chris Hammer, sat down with Riotact about how crime does pay with the publication of his second novel, Silver; and the Dark Phantom Review snagged true crime writer Caitlin Rother to discuss her research and writing, including her latest book about the murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks.
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