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Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working full-time and published seven books about "accidental PI" Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001.
Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards.
She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor's Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association. Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through ninth grade.
After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald and the San Antonio Light.
Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in 1989 and has lived there since. She is the daughter of the late Theo Lippman Jr., a Sun editorial writer who retired in 1995, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, a former Baltimore City school librarian. Her sister, Susan, is a local bookseller.
Laura Lippman's website
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Jon: For those who haven't picked up any of your books yet, how would you describe them?
Laura: They're PI novels, plain and simple. Sometimes, I think they read a little bit as if they're PI novels written by JoAnna Trollope or Cathleen Schine after a one-night stand with Robert Crais or Robert Parker, but I'm flattering myself. They're PI novels. It's a tradition I love, and one in which I'm proud to work.
Jon: The books take place in Baltimore. How important to the books is the city. it seems as though you know the city real well and it come through in the writing.
Laura: I know parts of Baltimore well, but it's an extremely complicated city. I'd be skeptical of anyone who had claimed to master all its cultures and subcultures, not to mention its history. It's like a really good song, a standard that a lot of people have covered over the years. Say, "My Funny Valentine." I have my version, and it's authentic, but it's not definitive.
Jon: How close did the show Homicide capture Baltimore?
Laura: Very well, in just the manner I described above.
Jon: and.... Is it true you used to work out at the same place as Kyle Secor (Bayliss) ?
Laura: Yes. Andre Braugher ...
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