Our mystery-writer-President! And while not all attempts pan out, Clinton is a bibliophile through and through; as one of our best-read presidents, he’s a true fan of crime fiction, a patron of DC’s now defunct MysteryBooks, and a major supporter of his favorite writers: Dennis Lehane, Walter Mosley, Sara Paretsky, and more. At the start of his presidency, he said he read two literary or nonfiction books for each mystery, a ratio that inevitably slid to one-for-one. He also reportedly screened High Noon 17 times at the White House.
Lisa Levy Reports on Walter Mosley, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Speed-Eating While Live-Tweeting
It is a given that everyone loves an award banquet, so much so that if they cannot be there they will watch it on television. Television might be the better option for such viewing. When you are actually at an award show, you are probably wearing uncomfortable clothes; there are inevitably 20 people in front of each bar for the whole hour of the opening reception (cash bar when dinner starts, babe, though people can buy wine for their tables); you run into plenty of people you don’t mind seeing but you can’t find the ones you’d actually like to see. And if you are me last Thursday night at the Edgars, which are the premiere awards for crime writing in the US, you are scrambling through the reception fumbling a phone, an evening bag, a pen and a program while trying to shake hands with all of the people you are introduced to by friends. Oh, and you’re live tweeting and taking photos too. No biggie.
Author Walter Mosley has been chosen as the 2016 Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and will receive the award at the 70th annual Edgar Awards Banquet in New York City on April 28, 2016. At the same time, two Raven Awards will be presented, to “mentor, teacher, scholar and editor” Margaret Kinsman and to Sisters in Crime, the group of women mystery writers initially convened by Sara Paretsky in 1986, and the Ellery Queen Award will be given to Janet A. Rudolph, director of Mystery Readers International, editor of the Mystery Readers Journal and teacher of mystery fiction.
