Walter Mosley
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Walter Mosley (born January 12, 1952) is an American novelist, best know for a series of murder mysteries featuring detective Easy Rawlins, many with a different color in the title. Several of his works have been made into films or television specials.
Mosley is one of the most prominent contemporary African-American writers, and Easy Rawlins has become one of the best known black characters in current American literature, with extensive appeal outside the black community. Mosley first gained national fame when then-President Bill Clinton, a fan of murder mysteries, named Mosley as one of his favorite authors.
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Bibliography
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)
Other Fiction
- RL's Dream (1995)
- Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1997)
- Blue Light (1998)
- Walkin' the Dog (1999)
- Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World (2001)
- Fearless Jones (2001)
- Fear Itself (2003)
- The Man in My Basement (2004)
Nonfiction
- Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of History (2000)
- What Next: An African American Initiative Toward World Peace (2003)
Movies
- Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
- Always Outnumbered (1998) (TV)
Walter Mosely is an African-American novelist most widely recognized for his crime fiction.
Mosely has written over 19 books which have been translated into 21 languages. His most famous novels center around the character of Ezekiel 'EZ' Rawlins, a black private investigator in Los Angeles in the 50s and 60s.
The EZ Rawlins series began in 1990 with the publication of Devil in a Blue Dress and includes the books Bad Boy Brawly Brown, Black Betty (novel), A Little Yellow Dog, Gone Fishin, A Red Death, White Butterfly, and Six Easy Pieces, a collection of short stories.
Devil in a Blue Dress was later made into a movie starring Denzel Washington.
He is the winner of numerous awards including the Anisfield Wolf Award, an honor given to works that increase the appreciation and understanding of race in America. He was a finalist for the NAACP Award in Fiction and won the 1996 Black Caucus of the American Library Association's Literary Award (for RL's Dream.). He was an O. Henry Award winner in 1996 (for a Socrates Fortlow story) and is featured in Prize Stories 1996: The O'Henry Awards edited by William Abraham. This year he was honored by the Sundance Institute with a "Risktaker Award" given to him by Sundance for both his creative and activist efforts.
He holds an honorary doctorate from The City College and has served on the board of directors of the National Book Awards. Born and raised in Los Angeles he now lives in New York City.