Walter Mosley

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For the Brooklyn politician, see
Walter Harold Mosley
.

Walter Mosley
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Alma materJohnson State College (BA)
Notable workDevil in a Blue Dress
SpouseJoy Kellman (m. 1987; div. 2001)
AwardsNational Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
Diamond Dagger, 2023
Websitewaltermosley.com

Walter Ellis Mosley (born January 12, 1952) is an American

Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California; they are perhaps his most popular works. In 2020, Mosley received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, making him the first Black man to receive the honor.[1]

Personal life

Mosley was born in

segregated US army during the Second World War. His parents tried to marry in 1951 but, though the union was legal in California, where they were living, no one would give them a marriage license.[3][4][5]

Mosley was an only child, and ascribes his writing imagination to "an emptiness in my childhood that I filled up with fantasies". For $9.50 a week, he attended the Victory

west LA.[6] He graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School in 1970.[7] Mosley describes his father as a deep thinker and storyteller, a "black Socrates". His mother encouraged him to read European classics from Dickens and Zola to Camus. He also loves Langston Hughes and Gabriel García Márquez. He was largely raised in a non-political family culture, although there were racial conflicts flaring throughout L.A. at the time. He later became more highly politicized and outspoken about racial inequalities in the US
, which are a context of much of his fiction.

Mosley went through a "long-haired hippie" phase, drifting around

Harlem after being inspired by Alice Walker's book The Color Purple.[9] One of his tutors there, Edna O'Brien, became a mentor and encouraged him, saying: "You're Black, Jewish, with a poor upbringing; there are riches therein."[10]

Mosley still resides in New York City.[6]

He says that he identifies as both African-American and Jewish, with strong feelings for both groups.[9]

Career

Mosley started writing at 34 and claims to have written every day since, penning more than forty books and often publishing two books a year. He has written in a variety of fiction categories, including mystery and afrofuturist science fiction, as well as nonfiction politics. His work has been translated into 21 languages. His direct inspirations include the detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett, Graham Greene and Raymond Chandler. Mosley's fame increased in 1992 when presidential candidate Bill Clinton, a fan of murder mysteries, named Mosley as one of his favorite authors.[6] Mosley made publishing history in 1997 by forgoing an advance to give the manuscript of Gone Fishin' to a small, independent publisher, Black Classic Press in Baltimore, run by former Black Panther Paul Coates.

His first published book,

Cincinnati, Ohio
, in January 2010.

Mosley has served on the

TransAfrica Forum.[13]

Former literature professor Harold Heft argued for Mosley's inclusion in the literary canon of Jewish-American writers. In Moment magazine, Johanna Neuman writes that black literary circles questioned whether Mosley should be considered a "black author". Mosley has said that he prefers to be called a novelist. He explains his desire to write about "black male heroes" saying "hardly anybody in America has written about black male heroes... There are black male protagonists and black male supporting characters, but nobody else writes about black male heroes."[9]

In 2019, after working in the writers room for the series

Star Trek: Discovery. After working on the series for three weeks, Mosley was notified by CBS of a complaint made against him by another member of the writers room for Mosley's use of the word "nigger" while telling a story about his experience with a police officer who had used the slur. CBS told Mosley this was usually a fireable offence, but said no further action would be taken and asked that he not use the word again outside of a script. Mosley chose to leave the series, quitting without informing Kurtzman, and explained his decision in an op-ed for The New York Times in September 2019. He did not identify Discovery as the series he was working on in the op-ed, but this was confirmed in reports on the op-ed shortly after its release.[14]

Awards and honors

Works

External videos
video icon Presentation by Mosley on Gone Fishin', January 15, 1997, C-SPAN
video icon Booknotes interview with Mosley on Workin' on the Chain Gang, April 23, 2000, C-SPAN
video icon Discussion with Mosley and Harry Belafonte on Life Out of Context, February 17, 2006, C-SPAN
video icon Interview with Mosley on Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation, May 1, 2011, C-SPAN

Non-series novels

  • RL's Dream (1995)
  • Blue Light (1998)
  • Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World (2001)
  • The Man in My Basement (2004)
  • Walking the Line (2005), a novella in the Transgressions series
  • The Wave (2005)
  • 47 (2005)
  • Fortunate Son (2006)
  • Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel (2006)
  • Diablerie (2007)
  • The Tempest Tales (2008)
  • The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (2010)
  • Parishioner (2012)
  • Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore (2014)
  • Inside a Silver Box (2015)
  • John Woman (2018)
  • The Awkward Black Man (2020), short stories

Easy Rawlins mysteries

  • 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)
  • Little Green (2013)
  • Rose Gold (2014)
  • Charcoal Joe (2016)
  • Blood Grove (2021)

Fearless Jones mysteries

  • Fearless Jones (2001)
  • Fear Itself (2003)
  • Fear of the Dark (2006)

Leonid McGill mysteries

  • The Long Fall (2009)
  • Known to Evil (2010)
  • When the Thrill Is Gone (2011)
  • All I Did Was Shoot My Man (2012)
  • And Sometimes I Wonder About You (2015)
  • Trouble Is What I Do (2020)

Socrates Fortlow books

Crosstown to Oblivion

  • The Gift of Fire / On the Head of a Pin (2012)
  • Merge / Disciple (2012)
  • Stepping Stone / The Love Machine (2013)

King Oliver books

  • Down the River unto the Sea (2018)
  • Every Man a King (2023)

Graphic novels

Plays

  • The Fall of Heaven (2011)
  • Lift (2014)

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)
  • This Year You Write Your Novel (2007)
  • Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation (2011)
    ISBN 978-1-56858-642-7
  • Elements of Fiction (2019)

Films and television

References

  1. ^ a b "Walter Mosley to receive honorary National Book Award". AP NEWS. September 10, 2020. Retrieved September 10, 2020.
  2. ^ "Author Walter Mosley on Writing Mystery Novels, Political Revelation, Racism and Pushing Obama". Truthout.org. February 27, 2012. Retrieved March 26, 2023.
  3. ^ Walter Mosley Biography. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
  4. ^ PBS interview, The Chain Gang, April 6, 2000. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
  5. The Observer
    . Retrieved March 3, 2010.
  6. ^ a b c Jaggi, Maya (September 6, 2003). "Socrates of the streets". The Guardian. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
  7. ^ "Mystery Writer Remembers His Days at Hamilton High". Los Angeles Times. June 18, 1997. Retrieved October 1, 2013. Mystery writer Walter Mosley, whose 1990 novel, 'Devil in a Blue Dress,' was made into a movie starring Denzel Washington, is a 1970 graduate of Hamilton High School.
  8. ^ Neuman, Johanna (November 30, 2011). "The Curious Case of Walter Mosley - Page 3 of 6". Moment Magazine. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
  9. ^ a b c Johanna Neuman (September–October 2010) "The Curious Case of Walter Mosley", Moment Magazine.
  10. ^ Walter Mosley biography Archived October 20, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, Royce Carlton incorporated.
  11. ^ "Listings – The Late Book: Devil in a Blue Dress". Radio Times. No. 3766. April 1, 1996. p. 109.
  12. ^ Lee, Felicia R. (January 26, 2010). "A Crime Novelist Takes on St. Peter". The New York Times. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  13. ^ Walter, Mosley (April 23, 2000). "Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History". Booknotes (Interview). Interviewed by Brian Lamb. Washington, D.C.: C-SPAN. Archived from the original on June 13, 2012. Retrieved February 28, 2012.
  14. ^ Goldberg, Lesley; Real, Evan (September 6, 2019). "Author Walter Mosley Quits 'Star Trek: Discovery' After Using N-Word in Writers Room". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on September 7, 2019. Retrieved September 15, 2019.
  15. ^ a b "CCNY Honors Noted Alum Walter Mosley, '91MA". The City College of New York. September 24, 2014.
  16. ^ Bosselman, Haley (March 28, 2021). "NAACP Image Awards 2021: The Complete Televised Winners List". Variety.
  17. ^ "2023 Dagger Award Winners Announced". The Crime Writers’ Association. Retrieved July 10, 2023.

Further reading

  • 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.
  • Brady, Owen E., ed., Conversations with Walter Mosley (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011).
  • Brady, Owen E. and Maus, Derek C., eds, Finding a Way Home: A Critical Assessment of Walter Mosley's Fiction (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008).
  • Fine, David, ed., Los Angeles in Fiction: A Collection of Essays from James M. Cain to Walter Mosley (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1995).
  • Freiburger, 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.
  • Larson, Jennifer E., Understanding Walter Mosley (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2016).
  • Lennard, John, Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress (Tirril: Humanities-Ebooks, 2007).
  • 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)

External links

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