From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walter Ellis Mosley (born January 12, 1952) is
a prominent American novelist, most widely
recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of
best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy
Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran
living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles; they are
perhaps his most popular works.
Biography
Personal
life
Mosley was born in Los Angeles,
California, the son of Ella (née Slatkin), a personnel
clerk, and Leroy Mosley, a school librarian.[1][2] His
father was African-American and his mother Jewish.[3][4] He
lives in New York
City.
Career
Mosley has written more than 33 books in a variety of
categories, including non-mystery fiction, afrofuturist science fiction and non-fiction
politics. His work has been translated into 21 languages. Mosley's
fame increased in 1992 when then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton, a fan
of murder mysteries, named Mosley as one of his favorite
authors.
Two of his books have been made into films or television
specials. His first published book, Devil
in a Blue Dress, was the basis of a 1995 movie starring Denzel
Washington.
Mosley is on the Board of Trustees for Goddard
College. He has served on the board of directors of the National Book Awards.
Legacy and
honors
Works
- Devil in a Blue Dress
(1990)
- A Red Death (1991)
- White Butterfly (1992)
- Black Betty (1994)
- A Little Yellow Dog (1996)
- Gone Fishin' (1997)
- Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002)
- Six Easy Pieces (2003)
- Little Scarlet (2004)
- Cinnamon Kiss (2005)
- Blonde Faith (2007)
Fearless Jones mysteries
- Fearless Jones (2001)
- Fear Itself (2003)
- Fear of the Dark (2006)
Leonid
McGill mysteries
Science
Fiction
Socrates
Fortlow books
For Young
Adults
Other
fiction
- RL's Dream (1995)
- The Man in My Basement (2004)
- Walking the Line (2005), a novella in the
Transgressions series
- Fortunate Son (2006)
- The Tempest Tales (2008)
Erotica
- Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel (2006)
- Diablerie (2007)
Nonfiction
- Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of
History (2000)
- What Next: An African American Initiative Toward World
Peace (2003)
- Life Out of Context: Which Includes a Proposal for the
Non-violent Takeover of the House of Representatives
(2006)
- For Authors, Fragile Ideas Need Loving Every Day
- This Year You Write Your Novel (2007)
Graphic
Novel
Films and
television
Criticism and
Scholarship
- BERGER, Roger A., ‘‘The Black Dick’: Race, Sexuality, and
Discourse in the L.A. Novels of Walter Mosley’, in African
American Review 31 (Summer 1997): 281–94.
- BERRETTINI, Mark, ‘Private Knowledge, Public Space:
Investigation and Navigation in Devil in a Blue Dress’, in
Cinema Journal 39 (Fall 1999): 74–89.
- FINE, David, ed., Los Angeles in Fiction: A Collection of
Essays from James M. Cain to Walter Mosley (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico, 1995).
- FRIEBURGER, William, ‘James Ellroy, Walter Mosley, and the
Politics of the Los Angeles Crime Novel’, in Clues: A Journal
of Detection 17 (Fall–Winter 1996): 87–104.
- GRUESSER, John C., "An Un-Easy Relationship: Walter Mosley's
Signifyin(g) Detective and the Black Community," in
Confluences: Postcolonialism, African American Literary
Studies, and the Black Atlantic (Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 2007), 58-72.
- LENNARD, John,
Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress (Tirril:
Humanities-Ebooks, 2007 [Genre Fiction Sightlines]).
- WESLEY, Marilyn C., ‘Power and Knowledge in Walter Mosley’s
Devil in a Blue Dress’, in African American Review 35
(Spring 2001): 103–16.
- WILSON, Charles E., Jr., Walter Mosley: A Critical
Companion (Westport, CT, & London: Greenwood Press, 2003
[Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers])
References
External
links
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