Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman
Lippman at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, April 24, 2008
Born	(1959-01-31) January 31, 1959 Atlanta, Georgia
Occupation	Author
Alma mater	Wilde Lake High School
Subjects	Detective fiction
Notable award(s)	Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Nero, Barry, Macavity, Strand and Shamus
Spouse(s)	David Simon
www.lauralippman.com

Laura Lippman (born January 31, 1959) is an American author of detective fiction.

Life and career

Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman, Jr., a well known and respected writer at the Baltimore Sun, and Madeline (Mabry) Lippman, a retired school librarian for the Baltimore City Public School System.^[1] Her paternal grandfather was Jewish, and the remainder of her ancestry includes Scotch-Irish.^[2][3] Lippman was raised Presbyterian.^[4] She attended high school in Columbia, Maryland, where she was the captain of the Wilde Lake High School It's Academic team.

Lippman is a former reporter for the (now defunct) San Antonio Light and the Baltimore Sun. She is best known for writing a series of novels set in Baltimore and featuring Tess Monaghan, a reporter (like Lippman herself) turned private investigator. Lippman's works have won the Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Nero, Gumshoe and Shamus awards. Her 2007 release, What the Dead Know, was the first of her books to make the New York Times bestseller list, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writer's Association Dagger Award (see side box for more awards). In addition to the Tess Monaghan novels, Lippman wrote 2003's Every Secret Thing, which has been optioned for the movie by Academy Award–winning actor Frances McDormand.

Lippman lives in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Federal Hill and frequently writes in the neighborhood coffee shop Spoons.^[5] In addition to writing, she teaches at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. In January, 2007, she taught at the 3rd Annual Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College. In March 2013, she was the Guest of Honor at Left Coast Crime.

Lippman is married to David Simon, another former Baltimore Sun reporter, and creator and an executive producer of the HBO series The Wire. The character Bunk is shown to be reading one of her books in episode eight of the first season of The Wire. She appeared in a scene of the first episode of the last season of The Wire as a reporter working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom.^[6]

Works

Tess Monaghan Series

1. Baltimore Blues (1997)
2. Charm City (1997)
3. Butchers Hill (1998)
4. In Big Trouble (1999)
5. The Sugar House (2000)
6. In a Strange City (2001)
7. The Last Place (2002)
8. By A Spider's Thread (2004)
9. No Good Deeds (2006)
10. Another Thing to Fall (2008)
11. The Girl in the Green Raincoat (2011)

• Orphans' Court (1999) (short story in First Cases: Volume 3, edited by Robert J. Randisi)
• Ropa Vieja (2001) (short story in Murderers Row, edited by Otto Penzler)
• The Shoeshine Man's Regrets (2004) (short story in Murder and All That Jazz, edited by Robert J. Randisi)

Non-Series

Short Stories

• Like a Charm: A Novel in Voices (2004) (Anthology, edited by Karin Slaughter)
• Hardly Knew Her: Stories (2008) (collected short stories of Laura Lippman)

Part 1: Girls Gone Wild

• "The Crack Cocaine Diet" (2005), first published in The Cocaine Chronicles
• "What He Needed" (2002), first published in Tart Noir
• "Dear Penthouse Forum (A First Draft)" (2005), first published in Dangerous Women
• "The Babysitter's Code" (2005), first published in Plots with Guns
• "Hardly Knew Her" (2007), first published in Dead Man's Hand
• "Femme Fatale" (2006), first published in Geezer Noir
• "One True Love" (2006), first published in Death Do Us Part

Part 2: Other Cities, Not My Own

• "Pony Girl" (2007), first published in New Orleans Noir
• "ARM and the Woman" (2006), first published in D.C. Noir
• "Honor Bar" (2006), first published in Dublin Noir
• "A Good Fuck Spoiled" (2006), first published in Murder in the Rough

Part 3: My Baby Walks the Streets of Baltimore

• "Easy as A-B-C" (2006), first published in Baltimore Noir (edited by Laura Lippman)
• "Black-Eyed Susan" (2006), first published in Bloodlines
• "Ropa Vieja" (2001), first published in Murderers Row
• "The Shoeshine Man's Regrets" (2004), first published in Murder and All That Jazz
• "The Accidental Detective" (Beacon-Light [fictionalized Baltimore Sun] profile on Tess Monaghan)

Part 4: Scratch a Woman

• "Scratch a Woman"

• "Family Man" published in the anthology Twilight Zone: 19 Original Stories on the 50th Anniversary

Novels

• Every Secret Thing (2003)
• To The Power of Three (2005)
• What the Dead Know (US) / Little Sister (UK) (2007)
• Life Sentences (2009)
• I'd Know You Anywhere (US) / Don't Look Back (UK) (2010)
• The Most Dangerous Thing (2011)
• And When She Was Good (2012)

See also

• Tart Noir
• Katy Munger
• Interview with Laura Lippman in Shots Ezine September 2012

References