Writing crime fiction inevitably means imagining outside of your own experience. Specifically, how do female authors write male characters and vice versa? How does the Me Too movement affect the ways that writers present characters, events, and situations? What about writing characters at different points on the spectrum of gender identification? Please join MWPA and Kelly’s Books To Go in welcoming bestselling crime writers Tess Gerritsen, James Hayman, and Julia Spencer-Fleming to discuss these and other related issues. Moderating their conversation will be award-winning arts reporter Bob Keyes of the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram. Books by the Gerritsen, Hayman, and Spencer-Fleming will be available for sale before, during, and after the event.
To RSVP for this free event and receive a link to the event on Zoom, please go here.
To order one of Tess, Jim, or Julia’s books, please visit Kelly’s Books to Go on the web or on Bookshop.
Trained as a medical doctor, Tess Gerritsen built a second career as the internationally bestselling author of 28 suspense novels. Her series of crime novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the hit TNT television series "Rizzoli & Isles." Among her titles are HARVEST, GRAVITY, THE SURGEON, PLAYING WITH FIRE, and THE SHAPE OF NIGHT. Her books are translated into 40 languages and more than 30 million copies have been sold around the world. She lives in Maine.
A native New Yorker, James Hayman worked in advertising for over 30 years before moving to Portland, Maine to continue his writing career and landing on the NY Times, WSJ and USA Today best seller lists. His first thriller, The Cutting, features Portland detectives Mike McCabe and Maggie Savage; his latest, A Fatal Obsession, is available online and in bookstores.
A former military brat, New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Julia Spencer-Fleming grew up in places as diverse as Rome, Stuttgart and Syracuse. She used her army past and a keen eye for the goings-on at her Episcopal church to create Clare Fergusson, first female priest in the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill. The resulting series has won or been nominated for almost every American mystery award available, including the Edgar, the Anthony, and the Agatha.
Bob Keyes has written about arts and culture for the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram since 2002. He received an inaugural Rabkin Prize for Visual Arts Journalism in 2017, recognizing his essential voice in the regional arts conversation, and in 2014 the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance honored him with its Distinguished Achievement Award. Prior to writing about the arts for the Press Herald, he wrote news and entertainment articles for newspapers in South Dakota, Connecticut, and Waterville, Maine.