October’s NYSinC chapter meeting guest will be Sarah Weinman, editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s. From her introduction to the boxed set:
The story of crime fiction in America has been largely understood as a male one. Starting with the terrifying tales of Edgar Allan Poe, moving to early “Great Detective” imitations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, on to the hardboiled tradition created and perfected by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, expanded to a mass audience by pulp paperback novels, and further refined and honed by the likes of David Goodis, Ross Macdonald, and Elmore Leonard.
That story, of course, is far from the truth. In fact, women were publishing crime fiction from close to its inception, with Metta Fuller Victor (The Dead Letter) and Anna Katherine Green (The Leavenworth Case) beating Conan Doyle to the detective punch in 1866 and 1878, respectively, and Carolyn Wells publishing her Fleming Stone series soon after. That women were always part of the tradition somehow got sanded over, whether by accident or willful design, even though they were always there, paving their own distinct pathways through the rules and tropes of the genre.
Our meeting begins at 6:30pm at the Jefferson Market Library. We encourage guests to join us for meetings and, if they wish, to come along for our optional neighborhood dinner afterwards. More details about the location and schedule are available at our Meetings Page.
Come join us for a fascinating evening and to learn how much things have really changed, or not, for modern female crime writers!